


Close Upon The Sun

by IShipItAllAndThenSome



Series: Daxamite Princess Lena AU [3]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Awkward Family Dinners, Awkward Flirting, Bad Communication, Break Up (not Supercorp), Bridge Bombing Attempt (ch. 4 only), Canon-Typical Violence, Claustrophobia, Day drinking, Established Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, Everything Is A Mess Because Everyone Is Trying To Pretend It Isn't One, F/F, Kara Danvers Needs a Hug, Kryptonite, Meaningful Flower Arrangements, Mommy Issues, Panic Attacks, Protective Girlfriends, So Many Guilt Complexes About Having Basic Emotions, Symbolic Parallels, The Healing Power Of Talking About Trauma With Someone Who Wasn't A Part Of It, The TNT Trio (DC Comics), The Vague Jewishness Of Raoism Which The CW Will Never Directly Mention, The Weirdness Of Making Friends, luthor family drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2019-11-28 09:55:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 44,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18206927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShipItAllAndThenSome/pseuds/IShipItAllAndThenSome
Summary: In the wake of the thwarted Daxamite invasion, Kara Danvers grapples with the choices she's made, while Lena Luthor needs to reconcile who she is, who she was, and what she wants. Already down one hero, can National City hope to survive something made to kill whole worlds?||The long-awaited s3write is technically here. Ta-da! Title comes from Tennyson'sThe Princess, which has some fun things to say about women and witches and stars and things named El(l).





	1. S3write Ep 01: The Girl Of Steel

The exclusive with Cat Grant, Queen of All Media, was supposed to put the issue of L Corp’s involvement with the invasion to bed. That was why Lena had agreed to it in the first place—no one got anything by Ms. Grant, and she didn’t pull punches; if she cleared L Corp’s name, then business could proceed as usual, and Lena could move on.

Except, in the aftermath, with the rubble still smoking and half the city out of work, that level of publicity just brought more attention.

“Do you want to do this?” Kara asked, carefully twiddling a pen between her fingers. “Are you _sure_ you want to do this?”

“If I don’t, then the sudden six figure checks showing up in construction companies’ ledgers is going to look awfully suspicious, and repairing the city will take even more time.” Lena let out a breath, plucking the pen out of Kara’s hands and turning so she could zip up the back of her dress. “I have to.”

Kara zipped her into her dress, taking such excessive care that her fingers didn’t even graze Lena’s skin. “You and press conferences, though. Worse enemies than laser cannons and steel support beams.”

“Topical.”

“Mm.” Kara paused, mid-back. “Can you, uh..?”

Lena scooped her hair out of the way, attempting to twist it into some kind of knot and pin it in place with the pilfered pen; it sort of worked, but only if she kept one hand on it. There was a long, horrible moment where Kara’s hands didn’t move and the zipper didn’t zip, and Lena felt exposed. The air on the back of her neck hurt.

Then, in an instant, her dress was zipped and her hair had fallen back down like a shield. Kara reclaimed the pen, clicking it absently, and planted a fleeting kiss on the back of Lena’s head. “D.E.O. agents in the audience in case anything goes wrong.”

“Something always goes wrong,” Lena sighed, smoothing her hands over her hips. “Will I be seeing Supergirl on patrol nearby?”

For a moment, Kara almost seemed startled. Her soothing neutral smile faltered, and she nearly dropped the pen, only just catching it. White fissures spread out from her gripping fingers, and the pressure they exerted, with a soft creak Lena could only just hear.

“Actually, uh, I’m doing coverage for CatCo.” Kara cleared her throat, tucking the pen behind her ear along with a stray lock of hair. “Ms. Grant said I should probably continue with my past few months’ work on the L Corp beat.”

“Stands to reason. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it, right?”

“Right.” And then Kara’s expression relaxed. She gave Lena’s shoulders a squeeze and leaned around to kiss her cheek, this time lingering long enough that Lena’s skin tingled for a much more pleasant reason than scar tissue. “You’re going to be fantastic. Everything is going to be fine.”

 

☆

 

Unfortunately, everything was not fine.

As soon as Lena took to the podium, even her newly desensitized ears were ringing from the sheer quantity of questions, all bringing up the same points—all points she had hoped not to address.

So she adapted.

“People of National City,” Lena began, hands shaking over the podium with the effort it took not to white-knuckle the edges, “when I relocated L Corp last fall, it was deliberate. I wanted to go where the Luthor legacy had caused the most damage and restart there, repair there. I made a promise, to myself and to all of you, to put my efforts towards making things better—a promise I became all the more determined to keep after adopting the mantle of Galaxy Girl, and a promise I will not break now that I’ve set it down.

“Things are not better, but my promise still holds. I still want to—I still _intend_ to protect and provide for this city, especially in the wake of—of this latest tragedy. So, until the city is fully repaired, all my efforts and all of L Corp’s overhead will go directly towards reconstruction and reparation.”

The flurry of questions that had barely died down for the start of her speech was reborn with what felt like an exponential increase in intensity. Lena curled her hands up, knuckles grazing the laminated wood, torn between physically bracing herself and minimizing damage. There was a time when she could’ve snapped that podium in half with a fingertip, and while that time had been brief and was now over, she still hadn’t quite adjusted to her old normal. Now that she knew what it felt like to be that strong, she found she couldn’t risk the consequences of misusing that strength, even now that it was gone.

“In answer to your questions, no, L Corp’s employees will not experience a pay cut or a layoff. There won’t be any new projects for a while, but everyone will maintain their level of pay, hours, and benefits. I—this is an attempt to help the city recover, and docking wages or cutting hours isn’t going to make anything better. And, yes, our alien employment initiative is still in effect.

“Furthermore, because I will be dedicating myself to the local recovery effort, L Corp’s recently promoted CFO will be taking over the day-to-day for the time being from our Metropolis office. I have full faith in Samantha Arias’ ability to drive L Corp onward, and in her dedication to the families affected by… by recent events.”

One reporter, CatCo competition, shouted, “Why all the changes to management and production? Is L Corp going under? Are you moving back to Metropolis?”

“L Corp and I are staying right where we are. Ms. Arias was the head of Accounting, which has been transitioning to the West Coast for the past year. Progress has been slow because of the investigation into the previous CEO’s financial records, but now that things are clear, L Corp will be entirely based in National City by the new year.”

“Are you staying in National City to facilitate a second wave of alien invaders? Is this just a Daxamite long con?”

“I’m staying in National City to help.” Lena forced her hands to lie flat. “I owe this city a debt, of damages repaired, of services rendered. I just want to do the right thing, and that means staying put. Any further questions?”

Out in the crowd, Kara may have been cheating by floating, ever so slightly, off the ground.

“Yes?”

“Kara Danvers, CatCo magazine. Where do you intend to begin repairs?”

“Thanks to some heavy investments from developers in the area, the repairs at the waterfront are already underway. L Corp’s money will be going towards fixing the damages downtown; the sooner that’s fixed, the sooner life can return to normal.” Lena smiled gratefully, and turned her attention to one last question. “Yes, you?”

“What do you have to say to citizens who feel you can’t be trusted because of how you hid your identity as Galaxy Girl? People might not have reacted the same way if you’d been open about your identity. What response do you have for those who say that you keeping who you were a secret, actively lying to a population who looked to you for protection and aid, endangered us further?”

Something caught in Lena’s throat. After a beat, she swallowed around the ragged edges of her guilt and managed to say, “I can’t undo my mistakes. All I can do is fix the damage and learn from them. National City, please know: I didn’t set out to cause any harm, and moving forward, I am an open book. I have no secrets from you.”

With that, Lena moved to quit the podium, but then someone shouted out something that stopped her in her tracks.

“Where is Supergirl?”

Spine stiff, Lena hesitated a beat, only one step away from the mic. She knew where Supergirl was—in the audience, eyes wide and jaw tight; in her apartment, suit hidden in a drawer with a false bottom—but it wasn’t her place to say. It wasn’t her secret to tell.

“Supergirl and I haven’t spoken,” she finally said, “since the invasion.”

“No one has seen her since after the batt—”

“We’re both busy dealing with the fallout. The consequences. I can’t speak to her whereabouts, but I know, wherever she is and whatever she’s doing, it’s what she thinks is best for all of us.”

“What if we need protection? What if they come back?”

“You all remember the CatCo broadcast. The duel. Supergirl fought as Earth’s champion and won. From what we can tell, that duel serves as a—a claim. An issued statement of protection. Supergirl is the Champion of Earth, and with her in that position, we’re safe. Forever.” Lena took a breath, then looked out into the audience, searching. “I don’t know if this means anything, but I… I trust her.”

Kara bit her lip, grip loosening on the pen in her hands.

“Thank you, National City, for your time. Hopefully, we can—we can all move forward together.”

 

☆

 

“Who the hell was that?”

“Alex…”

“No, seriously, who the hell was that? We’re trying to find a face on the security cameras your team set up—”

“The D.E.O. set up.”

 _“Your team,”_ Alex said firmly, stopping to look at Lena over her tablet. “You’re a consultant, kiddo, that makes these agents part of your team. We look out for each other.”

“Right.” Lena wrapped her arms around herself under the guise of crossing them and peered towards the tablet. “Nothing came up?”

“Nothing came up. The cameras were kind of a mess, recording-wise.”

“All the trans-atmospheric travel in May is still having an effect on the weather,” Winn explained, “hottest summer on record. The focusing mechanisms got shorted out by the heat, so everything is kind of… jerky and blurry.”

“Really?” Lena’s brow furrowed. “How does this organization pirate ninety nine percent of its tech from hyper-advanced alien societies, and yet your surveillance cameras don’t operate above a hundred degrees?”

“Hey!” Winn’s exaggeratedly affronted expression shifted into a wide grin. “You heard Alex, it’s ‘ _our_ ’ surveillance cameras.”

“I consult for the D.E.O. on chemical engineering and medical tech, I don’t design heatproof CCTV.”

“Oh, come on! We’d get to work together on something besides talking down the Danvers sisters’ flower arrangement freak-outs.”

Alex pointed a finger squarely between Winn’s eyebrows without looking at him. “I. Am getting. _Married._ I am entitled to as many freak-outs as I want, and my fiancée and I both have lots and lots of guns and pointy things which agree with me.”

Winn put his hands up in acquiescence.

“And Kara’s just trying to be productive while on sabbatical.”

 _Sabbatical._ An interesting choice of words, considering how many hours Kara Danvers, Investigative Journalist, was working, or how much time Kara Danvers, Maid of Honor, was putting into wedding planning. Even her type A bridezilla big sister was outstripped by a mile. Kara was definitely working full-time at her on-the-record job, and she was more than just on top of her social obligations, but Supergirl… 

Well. Lena understood why that unidentified reporter had asked where she was.

Lena pressed her mouth into a tight line, white-knuckling her upper arm. She barely even reacted when Alex switched from D.E.O. tablet to personal phone in response to a vibrating alert that, just a few short weeks ago, would’ve sounded like a landslide.

“Oh, thank god,” Alex sighed.

“What?”

“Kara finished her article about the press conference and called around the city, and she found a kosher bakery that’s willing to make vegan test cakes _and_ a vegan bakery that’s able to make kosher test cakes.” Clutching her phone to her chest, Alex’s typically squared-off shoulders softened for a moment, but then they snapped back to their usual angles. “Which means Maggie and I have to talk flavors, and then schedule two tastings, and then—”

Alex stopped listing aloud, and started adding to one of the many to do lists on her phone, mouthing along to herself as her fingers flew. About ten seconds in, she groaned.

“And I have to let Maggie _know,_ duh!”

Winn and Lena shot each other a look.

Walking away, backs to them, and not even looking up from her phone as she typed out a text to her fiancée, Alex pointed a threatening backwards finger and lowly said, “I saw that!”

 

☆

 

A week later and one tasting down, Maggie looked decidedly less engaged in the second bakery’s offerings, which meant Alex was decidedly more focused on engaging her than tasting cakes, which meant Kara was third-wheeling hardcore while simultaneously caring more about the style of vegan buttercream on this wedding cake than the people paying for it.

She wasn’t even put out by it. It was a fun exercise in using her heightened senses without being under attack, and that laser focus was the perfect distraction. For example, instead of thinking about the distant sound of a car chase approximately 4.73 miles away from the bakery, or anything else, she could turn all her attention to figuring out what the baker had used to turn her red velvet cake red.

As if reading her mind, she called out from behind the counter: “I used a blend of local dry reds. You mentioned that the couple were wine people, so I thought that would be a nice touch, plus it helps with the color.”

Kara nodded, smiling. “The anthocyanins, yeah.”

Brows arching, the baker smiled back, raking her fingers through her cropped hair. “Most of my customers wouldn’t have known that. Are you a chemist or something?”

“No, but my girlfriend has a PhD in chemical engineering.”

The smile dimmed, just a little, but then she shook it off. “Well, she’s a lucky girl. If you’re this dedicated to wedding planning when it’s your sister’s, when the time comes for you, it’s gonna be a breeze.”

Now it was Kara’s turn to flicker. _Yikes_. She checked yes on the red wine red velvet, then glanced over to Alex and Maggie.

With their fingers interlocked on the tabletop and their heads bent together, they’d look like a picture perfect happy couple from a distance, and even up close, their conversation sounded nothing like the template for an argument that Kara had sort of compiled in her fourteen years on Earth.

“Baby, I really don’t care what flavor of cake we have,” Maggie murmured, squeezing Alex’s hand. “It matters to you, though, so you should pick.”

“Maggie, it’s our wedding, and I want you to love everything about it, which means you have to tell me what you want.” Alex squeezed back, knocking her forehead gently into Maggie’s temple. “If you want, we can see if the cupcake place you like does weddings instead.”

Not unkindly, Maggie let out a soft huff of a laugh. “I like this place fine.”

“‘Fine?’”

Kara winced, and briefly considered tuning into the car chase that was now 2.36 miles away, if she had to give a rough estimate, because she was still definitely not listening out for it.

“It shouldn’t be fine, Maggie, it should be perfect. I want to make this wedding perfect for you.”

“Okay, okay, it’s—it’s perfect.”

Kara shook her head, fidgeting with her glasses on her nose and thinking, _I should’ve pared the flavor options way down at the first place so Maggie didn’t get overwhelmed by options, and Alex didn’t get worried about the overwhelm being a bad sign, and then this tasting would be going_ so much better _!_

“Are you just saying that? Or do you mean it?”

_Okay. Cut off time._

“Hey, you guys, we should really move on to the next flavor,” Kara interrupted, firmly pushing their tasting cards into direct eyeshot with two pens, and then clicking them open. “Elderflower sponge cake with key lime curd filling!”

They each started scribbling notes and, individually, with a hand raised to block their profile from each other’s view, Alex and Maggie both mouthed _thank you._

Kara shot them one wink in response and then gratefully accepted the next three slices.

“You… _three_ take all the time you need!” said the baker, before disappearing tactfully once again.

Alex took an overlarge nervous bite and chewed it like she was meditating. Kara followed suit, trying to see if she could pinpoint the mineral composition of the soil for each individual ingredient and then match to an actual origin. Maggie took a bite that wouldn’t crumb-choke her and gave a slightly exaggerated, but definitely genuine, hum of appreciation that, in turn, elicited a bright smile from Alex. She even stopped white-knuckling her fork, which was a definite improvement, and if Kara were to shift her glasses down her nose and peek through the tabletop, she would see two combat boot-clad ankles looped together.

“You know what this reminds me of?” Maggie said after she’d swallowed, head cocked thoughtfully.

“That, uh, that drink at the bar, made with that—?”

“That Naltorian liquor that’s _almost_ gin?”

“The Naltini! Yes _,_ that’s _exactly_ it.”

Kara ducked her head and took another bite to hide how widely she was smiling. She loved to see Alex happy; that was the reason she was going gonzo on Maid of Honor duties.

Most of the reason.

At _least_ sixty five percent of it.

Maybe an even fifty.

They made it to the third of six options—an autumnal spice cake full of ginger and cardamom and cashew milk _cajeta_ and covered in an apricot glaze under the frosting—with no new tension, and barely the shadow of the first flavor’s friction, so naturally, something had to go wrong.

Kara found it a lot harder to focus on that piece of cake because the car chase was getting closer. A _lot_ closer. If she was paying attention to it—which she wasn’t!—and if she were to divert brain space to calculate miles to city blocks—which she wouldn’t _dream_ of doing—it was only about three blocks away by the time Alex and Maggie had marked their opinions down.

She set her fork down, very carefully, and put her hands under the table to clench her fists in private. It was like she was riding a roller coaster, clinging to the lap bar to trick herself into thinking she wouldn’t fall out.

Maggie set her pen down and went in to finish her little tasting slice, and Alex rested her chin in her hand, beaming.

“You really liked that one, huh?”

“Mm-hm,” Maggie said, the tines of the fork between her teeth. “It reminds me of, uh, of when my aunt used to come visit us in Nebraska, and she and my mom would just _wreck_ the kitchen baking all day.”

Alex reached over and laid a hand over her knee, and Maggie shook her head, waving her off vaguely before pressing her palms into her thighs.

And then her phone went off.

“I’m just gonna turn this to mute—” Maggie promised, shifting onto one hip to retrieve it. She’d barely sat back down, barely turned her eyes to the screen, when she shot up to her feet. “Alex?”

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s a high speed chase in progress, coming this way, and I have a road block in my trunk.” Maggie looked apologetic, but she was also still looking at the door. “I’ll be right back, I swear.”

After a split second, Alex grinned and shooed her off. “Kick some ass, baby.”

Maggie tilted her chin up, kissed her a quick goodbye, and darted off. Alex sort of leaned off after her, before slumping back into her seat, stabbing up a mouthful of cake and shoving it in her mouth.

Kara’s brow furrowed, and she scooted into Maggie’s seat, wrapping her arms around her sister’s shoulders. “She’ll be right back!”

“It’s not that.” Alex leaned on Kara and sighed. “I’m just… going a little Bridezilla.”

Wrinkling her nose, Kara said, “Do you remember your first finals week in undergrad?”

“Yes..?”

“And how it wasn’t so much a week as from orientation week on, because on the first day of orientation, you called me so I could weigh in on your conjectured study guides for midterms and finals week, and read me your syllabi and two entire textbooks before Eliza caught me and said we didn’t have unlimited long distance and made me hang up?”

Alex groaned and shut her eyes tight. “Uptight nerd freshman Alex was a hot mess, huh?”

“You had good intentions, but you burned out. And I’m here to stop you from burning out this time, so you can actually enjoy all your hard work. As much as you want Maggie to have fun at her perfect wedding because you love her, you deserve to have a fun time at your own perfect wedding, too.”

“I just…” Alex let out a breath and sat up to look at Kara properly, and then promptly avoided all chance of eye contact. “There’s this voice. In the back of my head. ‘You’re going too fast, you’re not ready,’ yada yada ya. And I—you know, I _resist_ being happy, Maggie’s always telling me I need to let myself be happy. So I’m not just regressing to freshman year, I’m trying to shut that voice up, so I can get out of my own way.”

“Well!” Kara flung out her arms and grinned with deliberate goofiness, trying to get a laugh out of her sister. “That’s what I’m here for!”

“And I appreciate it.” Alex wrinkled her nose, grinning back, but then a more serious expression came over her face. “But there’s something else on your mind.”

Kara grimaced. _Fifty percent, shoot!_

“Are you and Lena okay? After everything?”

“Yeah! Yeah, we’re fine—we’re fine! She’s been… surprisingly calm.” Kara adjusted her glasses and glanced at her hands. “And really busy. She’s been working so hard on the city’s repairs, and I’ve been, I guess, working just as hard to keep myself busy. So she has space.”

“Do either of you know how to have space from each other? You were living in in each other’s pockets before you were even dating.”

“Well, that’s why the business. At least on my end.” Kara frowned. “Do you think she’s avoiding me?”

“Kara. You live together.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No buts. If I have learned anything from Maggie—”

“Besides the fact that you’re a lesbian.”

“ _Besides the fact that I’m a lesbian_ , it's that you have to talk about things with the people you love.”

“But you haven’t talked to Maggie about the…” Kara gestured vaguely at her own head, just under the elastic holding her hair in a tight knot. “You know, ‘you’re ruining your own life and don’t deserve happiness’?”

“I think that’s paraphrasing a little—”

“Okay, but have you?”

“No, of course not, it’s embarrassing, and she has enough to deal with trying to keep the Science Division from turning into the D.E.O. circa five years ago and planning this whole stupid wedding with me, and me going bananas every five seconds over every single thing.”

“Hey!” Kara swatted at Alex with a tasting card. “It’s not stupid, it’s you and the woman you love.”

Alex gave a hesitant, concessional nod, and then another when Kara said, “And you might not go bananas every five seconds if you let her know that you were worrying, so you two can take care of each other.”

“Okay, you might be right. I will talk to Maggie—”

Kara pumped her fist.

“—when you talk to Lena.”

Defeated, Kara slumped back, and then jerked upright again when Alex’s phone went off. “Am I moving?”

Alex held up a finger and answered. “Hey, Mags, how’s the road block?”

Staunchly resisting the urge to eavesdrop, Kara turned to Maggie’s empty plate and poked at crumbs with her fingertip.

“No, that’s—don’t feel bad about it.”

Kara’s eyes widened.

“Wait, are you driving right now? Hang up! Do your job and we’ll talk when you caught the bad guy.”

Retrieving the card, Kara started gently whaling on Alex again, and as soon as she hung up, said, “Detective ‘you need to be careful on the job’ is talking and driving?”

“The guy is in a grounded pod, his shields blew through the road block, but she managed to use my grappling gun to snag—whatever they call a tailpipe on spaceships from Xolnar. So she’s half-chasing him down, half…” Alex shrugged, defeated. “Being towed.”

Kara puffed out her cheeks on an exhale and said, “Let’s wrap up the rest, I’ll email the baker with our cards later. Or you can, or—or Maggie, this weekend, or—”

“Yeah. Let’s do that. I don’t want her to worry about missing anything, especially if I’m gonna tell her that I’m having a whole Norman Bates, Mrs. Bates, intracranial conversation with myself about place settings.”

“I thought it was about buttercream styles.”

“It’s about seventeen different things at once. Or seven _ty._ ”

“Earth numbers are so weird.”

“Yeah, they are.”

Kara tried not to think of herself as a liar. Sure, she had to lie to almost everyone on a daily basis, but if she accepted that as who she was, then it might become less of a quandary on less important things.

But Alex told Maggie that night about how loath she was to mess things up, while Kara and Lena seemed to miss each other entirely. Lena stayed at L Corp, talking through some part of the transition from one coast to the other, and Kara may not have needed to sleep, but she spent the night curled up in their bed, staring at the pillow opposite her, feeling impossibly weighed down.

 

☆

 

The summer passed, months of record-breaking heat marked by Supergirl going sight unseen and Lena Luthor looked at by no member of the press or public. There was hearsay, of course; one particular tabloid insisted that they were holed up in a secret bunker in Death Valley, causing severe tectonic trauma, while another had decided they were on an interstellar couples’ therapy cruise.

None of that was true, of course, though Lena had looked into providing invasion-proof bunkers underground in key locations of city-owned land, and Kara often wondered if the D.E.O. counselors were licensed for getting you and your girlfriend in the same room so you could say, ‘Sorry I lied to you for months, about multiple serious things, and then zapped you in the spine to control your powers, just like both of your horrible mothers did or wanted to do.’

Ultimately, she came to the conclusion that, if the sentiment couldn’t fit on a Hallmark card, there probably wasn’t a government-employed therapist who was allowed to address it. Plus, putting another secret keeper on the books, even one who probably knew who she was off-record, felt like a lot of unimportant work to do.

Really, she just wanted things to be okay, but for things to be okay, she would have to unmake some decisions she often caught herself thinking of as mistakes, because if push came to shove, she didn’t know if she could make the same choice again.

Which choice was unrepeatable changed day to day, moment to moment. When the scar tissue on Lena’s neck itched and ached, she wanted to leave her with her powers and find another way to defeat Rhea. When Lena overextended herself, forgetting her new old limits, Kara wanted to have never gone after that fallen pod; if she hadn’t brought Mon-El to the D.E.O., who’s to say he would have ever triggered Lena’s powers, making the Daxamite fleet stick around and look for her?

When Lena had nightmares she didn’t talk about, or flinched away from Kara’s hand on her neck without even trying to hide it, Kara wanted to have told her first thing.

Kal told her that he couldn’t have made that choice. That he wasn’t strong enough. Kara was afraid she wasn’t, either, because having powers wasn’t what mattered to her about being Kryptonian. Those powers weren’t what made her special, made her a daughter of the House of El. But Lena’s powers had been something all hers, no ties to Lex or Lionel or Lillian, a way to help that was entirely because of herself, and now that was gone—because Rhea’s actions had tainted them, because Kara had taken them away—and even though the whole world was free because of that choice, Kara couldn’t help but wish she had found another way.

That Supergirl had been Lena’s hero one last time.

 

☆

 

Eventually, summer rolled into fall, and the rebuilt city, like the disrupted atmosphere above it, had fallen into a strange, uneasy balance. It was a habit of two years not to commit a crime you weren’t willing to be apprehended by Supergirl for, so the crime rate hadn’t exactly spiked during her sabbatical, but people were worried it might. People were worried that Supergirl was too busy being Earth’s champion to protect them from petty criminals, or gone altogether, leaving them open to another invasion.

That was why Lena ended up not adding bunkers, in the end. She needed the citizens of National City to believe she trusted Supergirl.

She needed _Kara_ to believe it, too.

So, with the last of the city’s repairs finished, she commissioned one last public work. One last symbol of the new beginning they could all have in their whole-again home.

Unfortunately, that meant playing nice with he who bankrolled the area’s revitalization: Morgan Edge.

Lena missed solving problems with her fists a little more than she probably should have. Surrounded by the biggest names in National City’s corporate scene, she couldn’t help but think, _there has to be a better scenario for reintroducing yourself to society_ après _alien coming-out,_ but then, she had chosen to spend the six months since the invasion in relative seclusion.

 _Your fault,_ she reminded herself, _so deal with it._

“People like to argue that capitalists are only concerned with themselves,” Edge began, facing his little miniature mock-up of his would-be waterfront development—sans statue. “The truth is, without big business, this city would still be in ruin from those Daxamites. And look at us now. Bustling.” He turned towards the assembled CEOs and grinned his greasy grin. “I think we should all give ourselves a pat on the back.”

The worst part was, technically, he was right; L Corp was maybe the biggest business of all, but every company with some financial stake in the city had helped fund the recovery effort. But the people of National City, the volunteers and the organizers and everyone who had kept their lives together when their world had fallen apart, the people who had rebuilt the city brick by brick and kept things moving, they deserved more credit than the bankrollers and egotists and guilty consciences that gave them money to do it.

“And let’s not forget to glad-hand the mayor, as well. Without him, none of this could have happened, either.”

“It’s you, Morgan,” the Mayor insisted, visibly flattered by the obvious ego stroke. “It’s all of you. In six months, you’ve done the impossible—”

“Let’s not forget about Supergirl,” James interrupted smoothly, glancing down the table towards Lena, who said the same, if not in so many words.

“Without her,” she continued, “there wouldn’t have been a city left to rebuild.”

“Yes, of course,” the Mayor ceded, “which is why I’m excited about the unveiling of the‘Girl of Steel’ statue at the waterfront.”

“Mayor, it’s gonna take a lot more than a pretty statue to bring people down to that slum of a waterfront.”

“I am still working on the zoning commission, Morgan.”

But Edge wouldn’t be swayed from his showboating track. It was like watching a walking, talking, tax-cut-taking parade float roll through a busy intersection.

“You’d do better to explain how my development will revitalize that neighborhood.Starting with moving out homelessness, crime,moving in opportunity and an expanded tax base.”

He even went so far as to rub his fingers together. Like anyone with half a board meeting under their belt didn’t get what he was driving at, didn’t understand why the mayor was throwing over his constituents: money.

“They’ve all heard your sales pitch, Morgan,” James drawled, glancing over at him. “We all have.”

“Yes, I’m sure that everybody here has had a chance to read CatCo’s inflammatory articles about that _sales pitch,_ ” Morgan retorted. “Articles which have grown increasingly biased ever since you took over babysitting Cat Grant’s little mouthpiece, though her last hurrah as head editor wasn’t any less telling.”

Somehow, James was laughing—however quietly—at Edge’s puffery. Lena, though, was a little too raw a nerve to find it funny.

“Your development would level the whole area, force people from their homes, just to build high-rises for the wealthy!”

“Lena,” Edge tutted, “are you spouting the CatCo company line? Really. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that ‘the woman behind the mask’ repeats whatever soundbite the magazine that’s given her such good press spits out.”

“She’s earned that good press, by donating millions of dollars to the rebuilding efforts.”

“That’s funny, because I—I thought it was restitution for what her brother did. Or was it her mother? Or her _other_ brother, her _other_ mother? Or Lena herself, seeing as how she was the one who brought her freaky little family here in the first place, alien army in tow.”

There was a time when Edge, or any one of the essentially identical wealthy white men her job, her family, put her in contact with, pulling this kind of stunt, trying to get under her skin, would have failed miserably.

But that was when she hadn’t thought some of the very things he was saying.

“A little bit of business advice, Lena,” he stage-whispered. “Guilt is not a good business strategy.”

“No?”

“No.”

Lena turned in her chair, arching an eyebrow with a steely coolness she didn’t really feel. “Neither is exploitation. Just ask either of my freaky families how well it turned out for them.”

“Hey, now, am I on their level?” Edge stepped back as if defeated, hands raised in an unconvincing display of placation. “I just want a fair hearing, that’s all. I’d hate to think that any of you here were _un_ fair.”

Lena turned back towards her information packet and resisted the urge to wad it up and pitch it square between his eyes, right where the bi-monthly Botox injection went.

“Now, my people have put out a tremendous spread, just in the office next door. Why don’t we all adjourn over there and take a sample of that?” As he ushered his guests out the door, Edge glanced over his shoulder at James. “Mr. Olsen, you’re welcome to join us as well. You know, we can disagree, but still break bread together. We’re only human, right?”

“You know, Edge,” Lena said, hackles raised, “you are not as powerful as you think you are.”

“Neither are you,” he retorted, “not anymore.”

James rose from his seat, collecting his things, and deliberately crossed paths with Lena on his way towards the door. “You okay?”

“Fine.” She hitched her bag up on her shoulder and gripped the strap, finding a strange sense of calm in being able to white-knuckle the nearest thing on hand without worrying she might break it. “You’re sticking around for the press conference, right?”

“I might. It’s gonna be broadcast, but I figured, a little coverage biased in the other direction can’t hurt.”

James shot her a smile, clapped her on the shoulder. Lena managed a returning expression that didn’t feel too grimace-y, and then left Edge’s office like a house on fire.

Somehow, despite the business world having ruined her morning, Lena didn’t retreat to her apartment, or Kara’s. Instead, she went to work.

L Corp felt weird to re-enter after months of abandonment, and not just for Lena; one of the security guards jumped when he saw her ID scan at the door, like he’d seen a ghost. “Ms. Luthor—good to have you back.”

“I was in the neighborhood,” she said by way of an excuse, and ducked through to her office as quickly as she could, feeling more than a little overwhelmed.

Hiding, maybe, had been a bad idea, but she couldn’t imagine that six straight months of that meeting would have been any less horrible.

It was bad enough, having to wear long sleeves in California again so she didn’t get a sunburn in her glass-walled office, but once she was in, she didn’t get right back to work. Didn’t check emails—because she’d emptied her inbox at home—or look at her schedule—nothing was left for today, and she couldn’t escape the one thing planned for tomorrow—or do anything she might have done on a normal day.

Instead, she sat down at her desk and did nothing for a solid five minutes. Just stared into empty space, the air in front of her couch, above her chessboard.

Absolutely everything, down to the flowers on her desk and sideboard, was identical to the last time she’d set foot in her office. Right after the invasion, pretending things would be easily fixed, that they could be fixed at all.

When her vision started blurring, Lena blinked her eyes clear, pressing at them with the heels of her hands, and then found herself tuning in to the news.

She’d watched a lot of news once she came to National City, because she’d had a reason to that didn’t feel uniquely self-flagellative: she could actually help with whatever crisis was on screen, in a tangible and immediate way.

Now, she was back to feeling powerless in the face of emergency, and had lapsed into her old habit of avoiding the twenty four hour news cycle as best she could.

Except, it seemed, when the story currently cycling was one she already knew the ending to: _city rebuild nearly complete, Morgan Edge hates the free press, where is Supergirl?_

Eventually the coverage looped back around again; glancing at the time, Lena wondered how it could take so long to schmooze over West Coast bagels and out-of-season fruit salad.

“There’s still more I can do, and touch people’s lives,” Edge said, voice tinny and even more irritating through the speakers on Lena’s tablet. “In that vein, I’d like to announce a bold new direction for my company: I’m buying CatCo.”

There was a furious clamor for more follow-up, and Lena set her screen down, half shocked at his baldfaced agenda, half shocked she hadn’t seen it coming.

“In the past few years, the press in this town has swung wildly to one side—”

 _God,_ Lena thought, _can we go back to ‘where in the world is Supergirl?’_

Then came a knock, and up Lena looked.

_There she is._

“Hey,” Lena said. To her own ear, her voice sounded a little flat, and she found herself correcting as she continued. “I hate that sentient bottle of cheap cologne. Did you know?”

Kara, for a moment, looked a little stunned, but then she sank down into the chair opposite Lena and sighed, “No. James was blindsided, too. He thinks it’s _his_ fault for getting in Edge’s face.”

“Only he would spend that kind of money on a grudge.” Lena frowned. “Do you think the shareholders will listen to Cat?”

“Well,” Kara began, “Cat had to put her shares in a blind trust when she became Press Secretary, but I did some digging.”

Lena nodded for her to continue, then walked away. There was the pretense of getting a glass of water—and she definitely needed one; had it always been so hot in her office?—but mostly, Lena was finding it very, very hard to look her girlfriend in the eyes, and if she stayed to face them, she might have to interrogate the _why_ of it all, or worse, Kara might ask.

So, back to her, she sipped slowly and listened.

“Edge has been quietly buying up shares. Until today, when he put a tender offer to the majority shareholders.”

“No more free press,” Lena muttered.

“L Corp has invested in his portfolio, though, right?”

“Back when it was Luthor Corp, yeah, there was a working relationship, but Edge won’t listen to any ideas that aren’t his own, especially a woman’s. And after today, definitely not a known alien’s, even one who invested to help his little waterfront project.”

“Lena,” Kara said, all easy faith, “you are the strongest person I know. After everything—after everything you’ve done this past year, how hard can talking down one sexist xenophobe with more money than sense be?”

Finally, Lena turned. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said, though it was more to the patch of carpet distorted through the bottom of her glass than anyone else.

Kara smiled, then crossed to Lena’s side. With infinitely careful hands, she cupped Lena’s elbow; with infinite restraint, she planted a soft kiss on her cheek. “The free press sends its gratitude.”

Lena’s heart sped up, which was mortifying in and of itself, but she also froze, which was worse, because then Kara froze, and pulled away, and cleared her throat like she was formulating a fix for a mistake.

“Wait,” Lena said, reaching out and grabbing Kara’s wrist. “I, I mean.”

“I don’t want to bother you, so close to the unveiling.” But Kara didn’t retract her arm from Lena’s grip. And she could have. Easily. Before Lena even knew what she was doing, or registered the change, Kara could have pulled her hand free and disappeared.

Instead, she felt indulged, like Kara was just letting her act as if it meant anything, what she did, what she wanted.

Lena, internally, recoiled as if her hand were filled with molten lead; externally, though, she held on tighter.

“If I’m doing the free press such a huge favor,” Lena teased, “can you do one for the people of National City?”

“Of course,” Kara said, shoulders squaring.

Again, Lena’s heart fluttered. In spite of everything, she did love it when Kara got all heroic.

“It would mean a lot,” she began, slowly, hesitantly, “to a lot of people, if the statue’s namesake was there.”

“I—I don’t know. I mean, James is already asking me to do an exclusive, um, with her, so she’s gonna be pretty busy.”

“But she won’t be doing it then,” Lena reasoned. “After all, you’re covering the event, aren’t you? L Corp beat and all that.”

“I—I guess not.” Kara smiled, lips pressed together. “I’ll pass along your request. I’m sure the citizens are very grateful that you’re so dedicated.”

Swallowing harshly, Lena let go of Kara’s arm. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I just mean—I’m sure they’ll be glad. To see your face again, after all this time.” Kara’s forehead crinkled. “I would be.”

Lena clutched her glass with both hands and watched her girlfriend leave.

 

☆

 

Edge’s office felt even more unsettling to enter than her own, and even worse than it had the day before. Maybe because this time she was alone.

Either way, when Lena felt the least steady, she always tried to put forth the image of stability, and she found it a lot more difficult to suppress the urge to be… Not petty. Retalliative, maybe. To meet people, if not at their level, then at least in tone.

So she walked into Edge’s office, and when he ignored her—even though his poor secretary had definitely announced her arrival—she might have stood on his golf ball.

_But, really, it’s his fault for playing indoor golf alone on a Tuesday._

“Lena,” he said, straightening up, “twice in my office in as many days. People will talk. Is this some kind of game you and your supergirlfriend play: she goes into hiding, you make her jealous..?”

“Morgan, you have all the charisma of a Michael Douglas movie from the nineties.”

“You didn’t come all this way just to flatter me, did you?”

Resisting the impulse to roll her eyes, or maybe throw a punch, Lena squared her shoulders in a move she was definitely taking from someone else’s playbook and said, “I came because I have a proposition.”

“Ooh, good. I do like propositions.”

“Now you know I don’t agree with your waterfront development,” Lena said delicately, “but you are still the best developer in National City.”

“Let me get you a drink before that compliment leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”

“Your other work is why _I_ invested in your portfolio, and why I _intend_ to invest more.”

“Let me guess: you want me to stay away from CatCo.”

“Oh, come on, Morgan.” Lena felt herself playing it up, but she also knew subtlety would fly right over his head. “CatCo isn’t good business for you, and you know it. Putting that money into revitallizing the city is a much better look for you. It’s what you’re good at; focus on that.”

“You know, you can take the Luthor logo off your name, you can try and be human again, but nobody is going to trust you. I mean, the Luthor-Daxamite invader making money off the city her family destroyed? Twice?”

_Wow. The power of ego to make the guilty admit their plans._

“That’s a really easy sentiment to reinforce once I have CatCo’s editorial under my control.” Edge narrowed his eyes in a gesture Lena was certain he thought was intimidating. “People love to believe what they read.”

“Using CatCo to defame anyone who opposes you and promote your own agenda, that’s despicable.”

“Oh, no,” Edge scoffed, grinning, “that’s good business.”

Overcome with a rising tide of disgust, or maybe rage, or maybe both, Lena turned away before she could do something really unfortunate. Over the crisp click of her retreating heels, she said, “I’ll see myself out.”

After all, she had her own good business to attend to; maybe she was just lucky that her company stood to benefit from working in line with her moral code.

On her way to the waterfront, Lena fidgeted with her phone. Sam wasn’t set to take over things until next week, so she still had to follow through with the unveiling even if her CFO coincidentally happened to be by the waterfront already, and it wouldn’t mean anything if she wasn’t the one to do it, but god, did she wish she could pass this over.

Had her duties always been this heavy to bear, or was she just tired of shouldering them?

With a sigh, she committed, and fired off a quick text to Kara: **spoke to edge; he’s not biting bc we were wrong about blue corner in this grudge match. god i hate men**

After a block, she checked her phone again and grimaced. Too negative. **Can’t wait to see you there, though!!!** She thought about attaching the picture of Supergirl and Galaxy Girl from the shelter in this neighborhood from a few months back, but she couldn’t quite make herself search for the shelter’s site. It was hard enough just passing through.

Finally, she got to the site. Underneath a massive silk cover, she could make out the vague shape of the statue she’d commissioned; when the wind blew just right, she could even see finer details, like the arch of Kara’s nose, the line of her jaw, the purse of her lips, the furrow of her brow when she focused.

Lena kept her head down as she made her way to the podium, kept it down as the Mayor spoke and, eventually, introduced her.

“Now, I know you didn’t come here to see me, so I’ll start with the good stuff, and then just say a few very brief words.” She lifted her head, squinting out at the audience.

She could pick out a few familiar faces—Alex on the eastern perimeter of the audience with Sam surprisingly close by, Maggie to the west, and all the way across the street, the slightest suggestion of a red cape and sunlight glinting off blonde hair.

Letting out a breath, Lena gestured grandly and said, “My fellow citizens of National City, the Girl of Steel!”

The cover fell away, and Lena clapped, turning quickly to look. The sunlight reflecting off of the flawless silvery surface of the statue was almost blinding, but Lena couldn’t make herself look away.

Eventually, though, she had to, and she did. As if drawn by an invisible tether, a magnetic field or a quantum bond or something, her eyes went from one Supergirl to another.

“I am so honored to be able to present this statue of the Champion of Earth. I know what some of you—what all of you, probably—are thinking. After everything, to anyone who doesn’t know me, it must seem unbelievable, that I have anything nice to say about her.

“But ever since I came here—to National City—she’s been an inspiration to me. She’s been a mentor, and most importantly, she’s been a friend. When my life was in shambles, when who I thought I was went up in smoke, she helped me redefine myself. And in the wake of this tragedy, one that you’ve played no small part in rescuing yourselves from, I hope we can rebuild our lives, and be the sort of city that deserves to be saved.”

And then, of course, like all attempts at doing the right thing, the statue unveiling blew up in Lena’s face.

More accurately, someone threw a missile at it, but same difference. Everyone scrambled as the ground beneath their feet shook like it might crumble away entirely, trying to escape the blast radius. Everything was so chaotic, it was all a big blur that felt like an anguished, screeching infinity, and as much as Lena wanted to do something, there was nothing she could do. She didn’t even have a D.E.O. earpiece in, so there was no way of knowing what was happening; she was useless, helpless.

Amidst the screaming, the secondary explosions, the aftershocks, the flying rubble, there was a splash, and then a great gushing suction sound, like something rising from beneath the water.

Lena turned and watched as, through the clearing smoke, Supergirl lifted some massive submarine above her head with ease.

 

☆

 

That night, when the dust had settled, Kara came home to find Lena, on her couch, sipping what smelled like earl grey tea out of her WWWWD? mug, tablet in her lap like she was using it, even though the screen was dark. Her back was to the window, but her hair was down, spilling over her neck and shoulders

It was a nice sight, all things considered, but Kara still felt uneasy, after everything.

“Hey,” she said, floating through the window. “I—when you didn’t go to the D.E.O., I figured you might want someone to catch you up.”

“If you want.” Lena turned, putting her feet on the floor, her mug on the coffee table. “But I have to tell you something first.”

“Oh. Okay.” Kara landed and closed the window, wasting precious seconds locking up after herself. When she turned, she put her hands on her hips, but the posture felt awkward; she crossed her arms, but then remembered some body language dissection Alex did, probably when she was training as a new agent, and opened herself back up. “What’s up?”

“So after today,” Lena said, hands twisting in front of her stomach, “I thought about… what you did. I know you were on sabbatical, but you suited up, for the people, and you—when things got hairy, you stepped in. You…” She let out a sigh. “You saved the day.”

Kara felt an apology climbing in her throat; the only thing that stopped her from letting it out was letting Lena finish.

“And I, obviously, I can’t do that. What you did. I can’t lift a submarine off the ocean floor when a missile knocks it off course, and that’s _fine._ Really. I’m happy doing what I can.”

There was a firmness, an insistence, in Lena’s tone that brooked no argument, and Kara got the feeling that maybe not being fine with what Lena was fine with, in this specific situation, might lead to one, so she swallowed about seventeen _I’m sorry_ s and just said, “Okay,” in the empty space Lena left for her.

“So after that, I came here. I turned on the news. And I started thinking about how Edge would twist this if he took over CatCo. Would he even cover it? Would he try and blame you, frame it so you were responsible for casualties instead of lives saved?” She picked up steam, started pacing, inching closer to Kara with every lap around the coffee table. “Now, more than ever, National City needs its hero, even if she’s not ready to step back into her own shoes. I mean, just the memory of you, the gratitude people feel after you saved everyone last spring—you haven’t even been patrolling, but the crime rate has dipped sixty-five percent, did you know that?”

“I—I did, James mentioned that this morning.”

“Exactly! James, CatCo—they’ve always been in Supergirl’s corner. What happens if Supergirl isn’t visible, and the people who remind everyone how much good she does, how much good _you’ve_ done, are silenced?”

“Is Edge’s grudge against Supergirl?” Kara frowned. “I haven’t even met him.”

“No, it’s against me, which is besides the point. Or, actually, it’s part of the point, because it’s about to get a whole lot uglier between the two of us, seeing as how I just stole his shiny new propaganda machine out from under his nose.”

Kara blinked. “You bought CatCo?”

“Well, that just sounds totally insane. Nobody’s operating right now, how could I pick up a majority share at this hour? I’m _going_ to buy it.”

“I mean, you joked about it before, but are you serious?”

Lena threw out her hands and gave a tight, fraught smile. “I’m just trying in my own small way to help.”

“That’s more than small, Lena. I mean, what if you’re right? What if Edge starts targeting you? Didn’t you say he used to work with your brother? I mean, who knows what he’ll do to get revenge? He was behind the attack at the waterfront today, Lena, I’m sure of it, and that was just to clear the way for his development! If you get in his way, for real, he’s not going to stop at slander!”

And now Lena’s arms were crossed.

Kara reeled herself in. “I’m—thank you. For saving CatCo. This is… I have no idea how to thank you.”

“No thanks needed,” Lena said, sitting back down and reclaiming her mug. “But the thing is, I don’t want Edge to try and make things harder for any of you. I’ll make it difficult to trace, but I don’t want to put my name on anything. And if he tries to come after me… Well. There’s no proof, is there? So he’ll just look paranoid and hateful, and the only people in his corner will be the people already there.”

“Wow.” Kara sat down on the opposite end of the couch and immediately reached for the knotted hem of the afghan thrown over the back of it, fidgeting. “I—how is that going to work? You running a media company?”

“Well, that’s something you can do. If you want.” Lena tucked her knees up to her chest and leaned into the arm of the couch, looking at Kara, taking a slow sip.

Kara looked back, out of the corner of her eye, and then shifted to face her. “What is it?”

“You studied under Cat Grant, you know more about running a media empire than I ever could.” Lena shifted the mug in her hands, switching which fingers went through the handle. “And you’ve been keeping so busy since you don’t patrol anymore. I mean, I trust you. If you want it, you can take over. You can be CEO.”

“I… wow.” Kara felt her forehead crinkling, her mouth twisting sideways. “I mean, _wow._ ”

“Well, obviously, you don’t have to.” Lena turned away, stood, started towards the sink. “I can always disseminate the shares to trusted individuals, put it through shell companies—maybe I’ll even ask James, if you would rather—”

“Lena…”

Lena rinsed her mug, but even with the tap running, even as she swished and dumped on a seemingly infinite loop, her attention was on Kara, her eyes on her over her shoulder. “Mm-hm?”

“What would you do? If you were me.” Kara followed her over, stopping on the other side of the kitchen island. “Would you run CatCo, or would you… take up the cape again? For good?”

Lena stopped moving, and Kara kind of wished she hadn’t asked.

“Are you thinking about it?” she finally asked, in a very careful, stepping-around-landmines, sort of voice. Kara wondered whose landmines they were, who would lose a limb if they blew. “Coming off sabbatical?”

“You’re right. The city needs someone to protect it. I haven’t… I haven’t come back because nobody needed me to, but after today, maybe there’s a reason to suit up again. And, I mean, you’re always pointing me in the right direction. I wouldn’t have become a reporter if you hadn’t suggested it, I wouldn’t have come to the waterfront today if you hadn’t asked.” Kara leaned on her elbows, wrapping her fingers around her upper arms. After a long visual detour with the wood grain of her kitchen island, she looked back up, fortified for whatever Lena’s face might say.

It was surprisingly neutral. Not angry, not hurt, not lost, not sad, not happy. It was like the facial expression equivalent of the rainbow spinny wheel.

“So,” Kara said slowly, “if you need—if you think the city needs me—more as Cat Grant’s successor, I will do that. I trust you, too.”

Lena swallowed harshly, then turned away and turned off the tap. “If it were me…” she started to say, and then stopped, and then started again, voice steadier. “If I were you, I would be Supergirl again.”

“Okay, then.” Kara slid off the stool, mentally already out of her suit and in something that smelled a little less harbor-y.

“And besides,” Lena said, reaching over to touch her hand, “I would miss you on the L Corp beat if you took over the editorial desk. How often do you get to call lunch dates with your girlfriend a business necessity?”

Kara beamed, could feel herself beaming, couldn’t quite make herself stop. As she went and, at a normal human pace, got changed for bed, she couldn’t help but think that maybe things were actually fine. Maybe she was just clinging to guilt, making herself feel bad when there was no call for it—self-sabotaging, like Alex was.

Still, long after Lena was asleep, Kara kept an ear out, listening to the sounds of the city, especially attentive to whatever Edge might be up to. Even if Lena still acted indestructible, there was no reason for Kara to sit idly by and let another horrible thing happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this has been a long time coming and I'm supes sorry for not posting sooner, but today's Zimbio win was very inspiring and I figured I might as well celebrate by putting this out there!!!!
> 
> Also, I know there was no Morgan Edge timeout, and I wanted to put it in, but like... tonally???? she did not belong here. Just know that spiritually and in my heart it definitely happens. 
> 
> The s3write is a little different because this time around, I'm adding in Kara's POV, too. That's what [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17875868) was a dry run for, and since you guys seemed okay with it there, and since so many people were confused or unsatisfied by not having the main canon plot happen onscreen last time around because of the narrative POV, I'm caving to audience demand. you're welcome. 
> 
> Updates are going to be on Saturdays, so keep an eye out, and there's a reason for the question mark number of total chapters that _isn't_ an unfinished story that I'm gonna ask about later. 
> 
> Thank you for sticking around for this longass note!!! Feel free to yell at me about the emotional state of things right now, bc like... I Get It. Happy Saturday, and a big thank you to everyone who voted!!! We played a good, clean game, and we won in spite of everything, and tbh it's what we deserve!!!!!


	2. S3write Ep 02: Triggers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A powerful new villain brings up old wounds for Kara as she adjusts to life after her super-sabbatical; Lena tries to lead with her head, not her heart, while finding new leadership for CatCo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i posted this by editing the note chapter, and no update email went out, so i deleted the old chapter and am now uploading again as a brand new chapter two for convenience and visibility! sorry for the delay and the technical difficulties, and thanks to Earthling3 for letting me know what was up so i could fix it.

_There was something satisfying about waking up to watch the sun rise,_ Lena thought, _even now that it doesn’t do anything for me_. Of course, she wasn’t up just to watch the cotton candy colors drip up and up into the sky, fading from a dusky violet through varying shades of pink and peach and orange and yellow before finally circling back around to its first silvery shade of blue.

No, she was up to catch the NYSE when it opened, to get her majority share taken care of before Edge, who had publicly bragged about his ability to get more work done than any other developer while getting twice as much sleep in an article last spring, would even crack open one bloodshot eye.

As she watched the time on her laptop, which she had set back to East Coast hours just for the day, tick slowly forward, she wondered if she was making a mistake. If she was doing the selfish thing, the wrong thing, the emotional thing. Was her doing this any different than Edge, than anyone else? What gave her the right? What made her somehow worthy of making this call?

In the next room, Kara rolled over, sheets shifting. She always woke up with the sun, like tree leaning towards the source of best energy. Even without being awake to try, she was always actively pursuing what was best.

Lena emptied her hands and took a breath. Thought steady, calming thoughts. Waited until her hands stopped shaking, until her fingers unfurled from fists and her knuckles turned a less telling shade of white.

 _Fifty-seven seconds until market opening_.

She exhaled, and then picked up her laptop again.

She would just have to be better than herself, and everything would be fine.

As soon as she confirmed the purchase, the sky’s blue went bright and cheerful, and Kara wandered out into the living room.

“Good morning,” she mumbled, shuffling deliberately towards the kitchen. “Did you have breakfast yet?”

Lena inhaled sharply through her nose and shut her laptop. “No. I think I’m going to head in early.”

Kara looked up from her instantly-boiling coffee pot, letting her laser vision fade. “Huh?”

“I just—I’m going to have to deal with the board, again, and I should probably touch base with my CFO about the acquisition…”

Nodding, Kara set the pot down. “Um. Okay.”

Lena bit her lip and smiled a little twitchily. “Are you sure you don’t want to join the executive echelon? You’d look great in a power suit, nice little necktie…”

Sliding around the island, Kara grinned back. “Why, Ms. Luthor, are you flirting with me?”

With a demure one-shouldered shrug, Lena got off the couch and glanced at Kara through her lashes. “Maybe.”

“Well, that’s awfully inappropriate,” Kara said, walking over to her with an air of cockiness usually reserved for her cape-clad moments, “considering you’re officially my boss.”

“I distinctly recall offering you the chance to be your own boss, but you turned me down.”

“I don’t know.” Kara tucked a strand of hair behind Lena’s ear, fingertips trailing down her jaw. “Could be fun, getting all dressed up to knock all those sleaze balls down a few pegs.”

Pressing her lips together in a firm line, Lena took a step back, out of reach. “Well, isn’t that already your job description?”

Kara’s hand dropped, and her smile flickered.

“Granted,” Lena said hastily, “not as many pairs of tailored trousers involved as I might prefer, but still.”

With a laugh, Kara put her hands on her hips. “Well, that helps me pick out what I’m wearing today.”

Aiming for playful, Lena narrowed her eyes and shook a finger at Kara, even as she retreated towards her bedroom. “I knew you were hiding something from me.”

“Ha! I, uh, I guess the cat’s out of the bag.”

“Guess so,” Lena said, and she ducked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her and holding tight to a sigh she refused to let sneak past.

 _Better than you want to be,_ she reminded herself, and turned on the shower.

 

☆

 

Kara got to CatCo a few hours later and felt weird. A slightly different decision, and she could be walking in here outranking everyone. The power one choice had to change everything, no matter how small.

She shuddered, and sat down at her desk, grabbing a flower-printed Rubix cube to fidget with. Holding it under her desk, in her lap, she glanced out the window, squinting as far out as she could, to keep from watching the scramble pattern so she could actually have a challenge getting it right later on. Lately, she’d been saving the tougher unscramble for whenever there was some sort of distress in the city below—usually minor, something the fire department or the cops could handle—so there was something to focus on besides how useless she was being, but today, maybe, she wouldn’t have to distract herself. If there was danger, Rao forbid, she could just jump in and help.

Just the thought had her chest feeling a little tight, her heart beating a little quicker. Kara placed her palm over her sternum and let out a sigh, pushing back against herself like she could wring out whatever tension was in her lungs.

It was only eight thirty; nobody else would be there for a while. _Relax, dummy,_ she thought, and rolled her eyes. _Everything is fine._

Of course, in fifteen minutes, when James got there, things weren’t.

“So?” he asked, leaning against her desk.

“So?” Kara repeated, maybe a little surly, making her chair spin to face him.

“Is CatCo gonna be safe from Edge, or is he still gunning for me? For us?”

Kara sighed. Again. It was one of _those_ days, apparently. “He’s not after you, James, don’t worry. Lena fixed it.”

“She did?”

“Yep.” The lingering tightness in Kara’s chest was briefly replaced by glowing pride. “She works fast.”

“She bought his prospective shares already?” James glanced at his watch, and then up at the ceiling. “Right. Time difference. You guys must’ve been up early.”

Kara frowned. The tightness was back. “You knew what she was planning on doing?”

“Well, yeah. Since I stepped up as editor-in-chief once Cat went on sabbatical, she figured I might feel like she was stepping on my toes or something if she bought us up.”

Kara started twisting the cube again. “She didn’t mention that to me.”

“Huh.” James stood upright again, rubbed the top of his head. “Guess you guys had other stuff going on.”

“Other stuff? There’s no other stuff. What other stuff?”

“Didn’t she ask you to be Cat?”

“Oh. Oh! That!” Kara swallowed, and noticed just how fast her hands were moving, and consciously stilled them. “No, she did. I said no. What I want to do, I can’t do from behind a desk.”

James nodded, considering.

“You’ve been doing part of Cat’s job since she left,” Kara said, setting the cube down, “maybe you should be Cat, instead!”

“Oh, no way. I’ve got enough on my plate with just being the editor and…” The employee elevator whirred to life, heading downstairs, and James glanced its way before continuing, more quietly. “And being Guardian. Seriously, I could not pull off the 24/7 lifestyle the way you guys do. _Did_. The way you guys… did.”

Kara smiled thinly and rotated her chair back towards her monitor. “I’m gonna get started on some stuff.”

The elevator dinged, and out popped a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Eve Teschmacher. “Good morning, Mr. Olsen!” she chirped. “And good morning, Kara! Wow, you are just _always_ here, huh?”

“Yep,” Kara replied, “I sleep under my desk. The carpet is surprisingly comfy.”

“I bet! Mr. Olsen, I have your tea..?”

“Just put it on my desk, Eve, I’ll be in in a minute.”

She nodded, and bounced off, and James turned back to Kara. “You doin’ okay?”

“Yep.”

“It’s just, you look a little tense.”

“I’m good. Just trying to get a couple pieces done before I go interview Lena about the acquisition.” Kara flexed her fingers over the keyboard. “She asked me to break the news.”

“Well, if you want to talk…”

“No need. I’m all good.” After a moment, Kara looked up and shot him an apologetic half-smile. “But thanks.”

James flashed her one of his typical megawatt smiles in return, and went to retrieve his tea and get started on his own work.

Kara, now alone with her words staring back at her from the screen, and her thoughts racing inside her skull, wondered if maybe she should have taken him up on his offer to talk.

_No. Definitely not._

She got to typing, and did a very good job of not thinking about anything but her day job all morning. It was only when she went over to Lena’s for their lunch date-slash-interview that she started getting antsy, unfocused.

Lena asked her to be there, so being there wasn’t an issue, but it felt like an issue. It just all felt a little messy, everything out in the open, everything complicated and cluttered and closely-packed.

It almost made Kara want to fly over to L Corp for the interview, if only because being in the sky made it easier to think. Everything looked so straightforward from a birds’ eye view.

But flying would involve landing, and changing into her normal clothes, and can you imagine hiding a super-suit with a skirt under a business suit? Changing out of it, back into it, just how much fabric you’d have to hide when you left it behind or layered it all?

If Kryptonians could sweat, Kara would have been just from thinking about it. Even so, she still felt a little clammy.

So, instead, she ducked out a little early, with her bag packed for the interview, and walked there. With a few detours planned to pick up some mid-morning pastries, and then the lunch she was bringing, and then a walking doughnut, just to keep her occupied on the way over.

She made it about three blocks away, and then one of the few heartbeats she kept consistent tabs on suddenly sped up.

 _I could ruin you,_ a voice said from two and a half blocks away and almost thirty stories up, and she placed it instantly: Edge. In Lena’s office. Threatening her.

Kara ended up flying the rest of the way anyway, her bag and their lunches left on the roof in the millisecond before she swooped down to Lena’s balcony in full hero regalia.

“You are gonna regret, so regret, the day you screwed me,” he snarled, attempting to loom over Lena as he backed her into her desk. “I sure hope you enjoyed yourself.”

Kara glanced through the roof with her x-ray vision, and what she saw made her hesitate. Lena, though every inch of her radiated tension, was holding her own. More than that, without so much as throwing a punch, she was fighting back. Even her long, loose hair looked like it might suddenly come to life and turn him to stone.

“Because now, you have _all_ of my attention.”

“Oh, Edge,” Lena cooed, taking one measured step towards him, “like every woman who’s ever had all of your attention—I couldn’t care less. I think I’ll let security take care of you.”

Edge recoiled.

Kara swooped.

Lena glanced over her shoulder at the sound and arched an eyebrow.

“Ms. Luthor,” Supergirl said, hands on hips, putting a hair extra oomph in her posture, “you finished with him?”

Simply stepping aside, Lena inclined her head and said, “He’s all yours.”

“What do you think you’re gonna do?” Edge scoffed, but even so, he took another, bigger, step back.

Supergirl may have been the one who dropped Morgan Edge to his knees on an outbound shipping crate, but Kara Danvers definitely enjoyed it more.

“The attack, on the waterfront,” she said, “I know it was you. To clear the way for your development. You’re the only person who had anything to gain from it.”

“Yeah, well…” He managed to stand, if a little shaky on his feet. “You can’t prove anything.”

“Not yet. But I see you, Edge.” She strode closer, breaching his little personal bubble of ego and overzealously-applied aftershave, looking down her nose at him. “National City is my town. And now you’ve got all _my_ attention.”

Maybe leaving him out at sea was a little dramatic, but Kara couldn’t bring herself to give a crap. Lena was safe, and she was flying, and everything felt simple again.

 

☆

 

It was about five minutes before Kara Danvers, clad in one of her perfectly-buttoned button-down shirts, perfect updos, and an admittedly well-tailored pair of trousers, strolled into Lena’s office as if nothing had even happened, but that wasn’t enough time for Lena to get herself under control again.

“Sorry I’m late,” Kara said, all wide-eyed and rosy-cheeked. “I, uh, I walked over from CatCo. It’s just such a nice day.”

“Mm-hm.” Lena settled behind her desk once more, ran a hand through her hair, smoothing it down behind her shoulders. “Close the door behind you, please.”

Kara did, and then sat down, laying their lunch on the table between them. “I know you said salad, so I did get you one, but I also got you some fries and one of those weird smoothies you like.”

“Thank you, Kara.” Lena didn’t reach out to take her food. She kept her hands folded in her lap, and if they clenched into fists, well, Kara wasn’t looking, was she, and she’d never have to know.

Then, in hushed tones, as if she thought the temp replacing Jess while she was on vacation would eavesdrop, she asked, “Are you okay? I was on my way over when I heard him threatening you, so I… You know.”

Lena’s fists curled even tighter. She was half-convinced that, even without her powers, she could have turned raw carbon into diamonds, or diamonds into dust. “I was handling it.”

“I noticed. You were totally badass.”

“Mm.”

“I know I’m here on business, but do you want to eat first, and then do the interview? I’m starving, and I bet you are, too, since you didn’t have breakfast this morning.”

Lena said nothing, and watched as Kara unpacked their meal, careful not to stack anything greasy on top of her papers, mindful of the flowers on her desk. _So considerate,_ Lena thought, and her jaw clenched.

“I wasn’t scared, you know,” she finally said, very softly, into her straw.

Kara looked up, expectant, as if waiting for her to continue.

But she didn’t. She just repeated herself: “I wasn’t scared.”

“I know.”

“I was _angry._ ”

“Okay.”

“I was angry at him, for threatening me. For thinking I could be intimidated by him, as petty and self-serving as he is.” Lena took a slurp, jaw still clenched. “Morgan Edge doesn’t scare me.”

Kara nodded, forehead crinkled. “I just thought, since you said last night he might try and come after you, if I nipped it in the bud—”

“He thinks there’s some sort of… inappropriate relationship between me and Supergirl. That’s part of his angle, on ruining my reputation, on ruining yours. Hers.” Lena tried to loosen her jaw and found that, like an old door hinge, it was stuck tight. “Earth’s champion in the pocket of public enemy number one.”

“Well, that just doesn’t make sense,” Kara said as she leaned back in her chair. “Nobody would believe that!”

“Even with the photographs from last year? The articles? The statue?”

Kara’s frown deepened.

“No, you’re right.” Lena jabbed her straw at a lump of un-blended wheatgrass. “Because Supergirl would never do something that wasn’t perfectly right. Nobody would question her ethics.”

Softly, Kara said, “Hey…” and reached across the table.

Lena retreated, sinking into her chair. “I… _appreciate_ you looking out for me,” she finally said, “but I would appreciate it more if you looked after yourself. Actions have consequences, sometimes ones you can’t anticipate, and I don’t want you to deal with any of his mud slung your way.” She looked up, managed an apologetic expression that didn’t feel like a grimace. “That’s all.”

“Thank you for your concern,” Kara said, and if it had been anyone else, it would have sounded pat and hollow, but instead, it sounded utterly genuine and Lena was suddenly wracked with guilt.

_Better than you want to be, Luthor._

“Listen, if you’re busy today, we can reschedule for tomorrow,” Kara offered, and now _she_ sounded concerned.

“No!” Lena said, stretching over and trapping the corner of Kara’s napkin with her fingertip. “Tomorrow I have meetings with my CFO all afternoon, so I won’t be able to fit you in.” She let out a relieved, if resigned, breath when Kara settled back into her chair, and slouched, just a little. “Let’s just get this over with.”

 

☆

 

Maybe it was a bad idea to drink the night before such a heavy work day, but fuck it. Lena couldn’t exactly go out and do wind sprints across the skyline to cool off anymore, so she would have to settle for unloading on Winn while they both got loaded.

Unfortunately, he was still a lightweight, so before she was even drunk enough to start venting, he was already only semi-coherent as he caught her up on the daily goings-on at the D.E.O.

“Plus, I think J’onn is _lonely._ Do you think he’s _lonely?”_

“I think if you keep talking about how _‘lonely’_ you think your boss is, in a bar he frequents, occasionally in your company, it won’t end well for you.” Lena glanced longingly at the more interstellar bottles lining the back shelf before gesturing to the bartender for another boring old whiskey.

Winn grimaced, hissing through his teeth. “Oopsie.”

“Can I make that a double, actually?”

They obliged, and Lena paced herself, only downing half her glass.

“So.” Winn put his cheek on his hand, and managed not to totally miss his target. “Rough day?”

“Sometimes I wish I could go full mythical on the people I deal with. Just. Turn Edge to stone or something. Make him watch eagles peck out his liver or something.”

She tossed back the rest of her drink and wrinkled her nose. So much for pacing herself.

“Ouch.” Winn patted his own stomach, approximately where his liver would be—if on the wrong side. “What’d he do to piss you off?”

“The usual. Poorly veiled threats and cheap intimidation tactics. It’s insulting, being underestimated.”

He nodded sympathetically, and fished the orange slice out of his drink with the toothpick end of his umbrella. “You should talk to Lyra. She’s angry, too.”

“I don’t think I’m on Lyra’s level when it comes to that,” Lena said, recalling her most recent, and incredibly detailed, tirade after a loss at game night. Who would have thought that a friendly game of Go Fish could result in a twelve minute monologue on the different sounds bodies make when you rip them to pieces?

“Yeah. You keep it on lock, mostly. She’s angry, like, all the time. Like, _so_ angry, _scary_ angry, _all_ the time. Do you think that’s like, a Valerian thing, or a ‘my whole planet died and I had to watch’ thing, or a _her_ thing, or what?”

“She has a lot of things worth being angry about,” Lena muttered, raising two fingers and then pointing at her glass.

“I mean, Kara’s planet died, too,” Winn mumbled around a mouthful of soggy citrus. _“She’s_ not angry all the time.”

The bartender looped around to refill Lena’s drink, but she shook her head. “Never mind. Thank you.” She reached into her wallet and slapped down a fifty, then confiscated Winn’s drink to use as a paperweight. “C’mon, Schott. Let’s get you somewhere nobody else has to clean up after you if you puke.”

“I’m not gonna _puke!”_

“Just in case, though.”

“…Just in case.”

Once Lena got Winn in her car, she gave her driver instructions to take him home, and decided to walk, just to clear her head, get some fresh air.

And if she had to crash at her own apartment for once, instead of Kara’s, because it just so happened to be closer (on technicality, since her car was in the eastern corner of the parking lot and her apartment was in that direction, even if Kara’s was basically the same distance west), well, it was just safer for her to walk there, and nobody could fault her decision-making.

She fired off a text that should have been quick, and instead took half her walk home to concoct: **staying at my place tonight, just don’t want anyone to see the new owner show up to work w/their star reporter even if i am passing the buck**

It wasn’t even an illogical excuse; in fact, she wished that had been the reasoning behind her choice. The thought disturbed her enough that she turned her phone off without waiting to get Kara’s reply.

She’d had a little too much conversation already to go home to more. She’d had enough conversation to last her a lifetime.

 

☆

 

In the morning, Kara was a little out of sorts—more than a little, actually. She’d gotten used to Lena sleeping beside her, and without her there, she couldn’t manage to even pretend at sleeping. For the first time in a long time, she’d thought about patrolling through the night, and the impulse had knocked her off-kilter. The only upside to her sleepless night was that all the reminiscing and fretting and pacing holes in her kitchen floor had reminded her of Eliza’s old tradition for first days, and given her time to call and leave a message at the nice stationary store uptown so she could pick up Lena’s present before work.

Lena felt out of sorts, too. She had spent so much time at Kara’s that it was surprising how comfortable she still was in her penthouse, even though she’d stopped coming over after the interview with Cat Grant when paparazzi had used old online apartment listings to try and locate where she lived. It seemed a few months of absenteeism had discouraged them all enough to leave, and she was free to do almost anything she wanted in the privacy of her own home. She almost did the middle school thing and screamed into her pillow, but at the last second, she stopped herself— _what if Kara heard, and flew over, because she thought you were under siege or something?_ —and just made herself drink a gallon of water before brushing her teeth and going to bed. Come morning, she wasn’t hung over, and had actually slept alright, even with her hair tied up to mitigate the early autumn heat. She was even tempted to keep it up at work, but she would be spending her morning at CatCo, so instead, she let it down.

Kara knew Lena wouldn’t arrive until after ten, because she was supposed to conference call some Swiss investors with her new CFO at eight thirty, but that didn’t stop her from arriving early and pacing around the empty office. It also didn’t stop her from exiting and re-entering every half hour until nine, on the off-chance that they might bump into each other.

The knowledge that this was definitely weird behavior didn’t stop her, either, but it did keep her mind occupied enough with worries that she was going to mess things up by being weird this morning that she was only spending half her time wondering if she’d messed things up yesterday, or the day before, or six months ago.

Finally, just as she came back from her ten o’clock re-entry and closed the stairwell doors behind her, she heard Lena’s distinctive heels enter the lobby downstairs.

 _Damnit,_ she thought, and only didn’t give in to the urge to hide under her desk by hiding in the bathroom instead.

When Lena exited the elevator, she glanced furtively around for Kara’s familiar face but found her desk empty, and she didn’t like the way that she relaxed a little at the sight.

She did tense up again, though, when someone said her name.

“Ms. Luthor! It’s so nice to see you.”

Lena turned, squinted, placed the face almost immediately. “Eve _Teschmacher_ , right?”

There was a squeal. Maybe Lena was a little bit hungover, after all.

“Sorry,” Eve said, grinning, “I’m a huge admirer of yours.”

“Thank you, Eve,” Lena said. _Well,_ huge admirer _is better than_ someone who passes out pamphlets detailing why you should be ejected off-world, _right?_

“Oh, uh, can I get you a coffee?” Eve skittered out from behind her desk, gesticulating wildly, smile still fixed. “You take it black, right? I’m not stalking you or anything, I emailed your assistant at L Corp about all your favorite things.”

Which meant she’d gotten in touch with the temp, and the temp had gotten in touch with Jess. Lena really needed to boost her vacation pay, if she was still dealing with stuff like this.

Lena snapped back into the conversation after making a mental note, and smiled back. “Thank you, a coffee would be lovely.”

“Great!”

Eve went back behind her desk to get her purse, and then started towards the stairs.

“Oh, Eve? Why don’t you just take that elevator? It’ll take you right to the ground floor.”

“Oh, no,” Eve said, and suddenly she was gesturing _at_ Lena, “only _the boss_ can use it.”

“Well, that’s just silly. Anyone who needs it should be able to use it.” Lena laughed, just a little, and relaxed. “Besides, I’m not the boss around here. I just came by to talk to—”

“Kara?”

“No, uh, James, actually.”

“Oh! Well, he’s in his office, and Kara is probably making her rounds again. Wait another couple minutes and you’ll probably bump into each other.”

“Thank you, Eve.”

Eve cut around her towards the elevator, and Lena started towards James’ office, knocking on his open glass door and wondering, vaguely, why such impractical doors would even be installed.

“Ms. Luthor!” He rose from his desk and waved her in.

“Sorry if I’m coming at a bad time; I was just able to get things in line over at L Corp and my CFO had to end a conference call early.”

“Not at all,” James said, watching as she closed the door behind her. “I wanna say thanks again for saving CatCo, and we should really figure out a way to get you up to speed on what’s happening here. I was thinking weekly meetings, or…”

“Oh, no, no, there’s no need,” Lena said, standing behind the chair in front of his desk, gripping the backrest. “I won’t be of any real use here, and my part in things is finished. I actually came over to—”

“Talk to Kara? Yeah, she’s been running around all morning like—”

 _“No._ Why does everyone think I’m here to talk to Kara?”

“Because you usually are? And she’s been—”

“I know you turned me down on being CEO because you like your current work-life balance,” Lena blurted, “and I respect that completely, but I just wanted to check in and make sure that was your final call, and then pass you some résumés of prospective figureheads to fill in if it is. Not particularly involved people, no one to try and tell you what to do or change things up, but ones who know a little more about running a media empire than me.”

“Oh.” James blinked. “Okay.”

“Sorry.” Lena consciously loosened her grip on the chair. “I just—it’s been a morning, and I don’t want to take up any more of your time than necessary.”

“You can sit down, if you want.”

“I’d rather not; I have to leave soon.”

“Uh-huh.”

Lena sat.

“Look. We don’t need a figurehead, okay? We don’t need some puppet, placeholder CEO to keep Edge out. _You_ already did that.” James leaned forwards, his elbows on the desk. “We’re gonna be fine.”

“But you do need someone. If nobody is here to give the company direction and leadership, then Edge can destabilize you without ever spending a dime.” Lena crossed her ankles to keep from jiggling her leg. “You’ve been the editor-in-chief, that’s half of what Cat did already, and you came here to just be the art editor. Art editor, E.I.C., CEO—that’s a totally normal career trajectory. You’ll be fine. You already get treated like a CEO by outsiders, so why not?”

James shook his head. “I came here to get out from under other people’s shadows, you know? Start fresh, be my own man. I don’t want to be the new Cat Grant. I want to be James Olsen.”

“Well, we don’t always get to be who we want.”

A knock came at the glass doors, and then James waved whoever it was in, looking suddenly very relieved. Lena turned, thinking—hoping—it was Eve with her coffee so she could have something to do with her hands, but instead, it was Kara.

“Happy first day at CatCo,” she said, in one big rush, brandishing an oxblood leather-bound planner. “I mean, I know it’s not _really_ your first day, because you said you’re not going to run things, but…”

Lena stood, and took it, a little lightheaded. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s a Danvers’ family tradition. First day of school, you get a planner.”

“Well, it’s lovely.” It was weighty in her hands, soft to the touch, imbued with enough body heat that it was apparent Kara had been carrying it close to her for a while, and Lena didn’t know how to process that information. “In the Luthor house on the first day, we would hire a private investigator to make sure our teachers’ credentials were up to date.”

Kara laughed, giddy and bright. James laughed, too, a little on edge. He still wasn’t great on the name dropping when it came to family stories, which meant Lena had just put her foot further into her mouth. Wonderful.

“So, uh, you knew why Ms. Luthor was coming in this morning?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Kara adjusted her glasses, smoothed her hands over her hips. “She texted me about it last night.”

James looked between the two of them. “Huh.”

“I’m sorry, I should have communicated more clearly, Mr. Olsen. It won’t happen again.”

“No, I’m sorry, I just—we’re not ready for this kind of change in management.”

“Well, you’re already at the desk, so…”

Now Kara was looking between the two of them as if, on top of heat vision and x-ray vision, she could also see conversational tension in the air. “Uh, Lena,” she said, shifting subtly between her and James at just the right angle to walk Lena out the door, “do you want to look over the Edge investigation dossier with me? You’ve got business connections that would be really helpful, and, um, his financials would be super helpful information for our readers if we’re presenting a case on his shady business dealings. And. Uh. Stuff.”

Lena allowed herself to be led, even accepted Kara’s hand on her shoulder (how work appropriate!), but they only made it to the office door before both of their phones went off, and a familiar look crossed Kara’s face when she checked hers.

“Uh.” She looked up, and the expression shifted towards something resembling pain, almost. “I actually have to go handle, um, something. I can get it for you later, maybe—” and her voice dropped to a whisper “—bring it home tonight? Or, or, um, bring it to your place?”

“No, that’s fine. You should go.” Lena shot her a smile and watched her walk away, hugging the planner to her stomach.

“Uh, I could get someone else to bring that to you,” James offered.

“No, no, it’s fine, I can get it later.” Lena tried to loosen her stiff posture and failed. “I should probably head out.”

“You can have your assistant send Eve those résumés, if you want to, but I can’t guarantee they’ll get looked at.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

On her way out, Lena passed Eve in the lobby as she was entering elevator up.

“Oh, Ms. Luthor! I’m sorry I took so long, there was a line at Noonan’s—”

“Not a problem, Eve, you don’t have to apologize.” Lena took the cup and started for the doors. “Thank you, again, for the coffee.”

“You’re welcome!” Eve called, but Lena wasn’t paying attention.

Instead, she was looking at her phone. As a consultant, she was technically privy to some of the D.E.O.’s alerts, but over the summer, she’d asked to be included on all of them—even the general ones that were just to help the analysts with their predictive algorithm for alien and meta attacks—and she knew Kara got the big ones, too.

Her new alert, though, wasn’t for a big one. It was analysts-only, for bank robberies that had already happened and been passed through the police.

She would never admit to avoiding Kara, but she’d never thought that Kara might be avoiding her, too.

 

☆

 

“What was the general alert for?” Kara asked upon landing, speaking over an incredulous outcry of _jiggy?_ that she would definitely ask for followup on later.

“Wait, you get the general alerts?” Winn asked, the tone of incredulity, if anything, more present for her than for someone saying _jiggy,_ which was absurd. “I thought those were just for analysts.”

“No, I had them add me to the distro lists.”

And now Alex was looking at her funny. Great.

“Now that I’m, y’know, back at it, I want to know what’s going on with the city at all times.”

As everybody walked her through the bank robberies, Kara’s mind spun out questions, possible motives and species of perpetrator, every bit of useful information stored in her head. Even on her flight to the third robbery, thankfully still in progress and with no reported casualties, she kept running new plans in her head— _what happens if I try and get everybody out? probably, since I don’t know what knocked them out, something bad_ —up until the point that she entered the open vault.

“I got you cornered,” she said, as soon as she landed, and immediately thought of at least seven better ways to have started this.

_Three hits in one morning? She’s not going to be easily cowed; she’ll be cocky, confident. Could Supergirl’s confidence overpower hers, or is her confidence founded in some real advantage? What if I can’t stop her? What if someone gets hurt?_

“Do you?” the robber replied coolly.

Kara strode closer. “What did you do to them up there?”

That got a response; the robber turned, a fleeting series of microexpressions crossing her face—surprise, curiosity, satisfaction—and then said, “I only wanted to play. But they didn’t want to play with me.”

_It’s a game for her, or that’s a front. Is she lonely, or does she just like hurting people, exerting her power over them?_

_Both. Duh._

“Well, you’re not getting away with it.”

“Oh.” She turned the rest of the way around and grinned. “You think you’re the cat, and I’m the bird.”

_Metaphors—what planets use metaphors that much? where else are there cats and birds? weaknesses, weaknesses, what are her weaknesses?_

She turned, zipped the bag—not even all the way full. “You can join me,” she said, shouldering the duffel. “Maybe then you’d be happy.

“You see, money equals happiness. More money, more happiness.”

Kara saw, unbidden, flashes of Lena’s face in her periphery, the microexpressions she tried to hide from view. _Not always,_ she thought, a weight in her chest, and said, “Your priorities are seriously out of whack.”

The robber nodded, looking both amused and distraught. “I know, right?” she said, and then giggled. _Giggled._

“Put the bag down,” Kara said sternly.

The robber didn’t. Instead, she let out a sigh, and then this expression came over her face—vacant, but hyperfocused, like she was meditating, and then suddenly everything felt very small, too small, and Kara wouldn’t fit, was too clumsy and big, would break everything she touched, and she couldn’t breathe.

It was like she was fourteen again, trying to camp out in the backyard at Jeremiah’s suggestion to celebrate a year on Earth, but the tight quarters of the tent and the stars visible through the nylon, even though they formed the wrong constellations, were too much like the worst day of her life, and she had been so—

And then Maggie was there. And Kara didn’t want Maggie there, because Maggie already didn’t like her, and being this weak and embarrassing in front of her, this raw nerve, would run her off, and then Alex would be angry, and she would have ruined things because she couldn’t control herself, couldn’t be strong enough.

All the way back to the D.E.O., Kara was withdrawn. Inside her head, it was finally quiet, like the sudden memories and the terror had scooped everything out of her and left her totally empty, but there was a similar hollowness in her chest that felt like forboding, like she knew without knowing that something worse would happen.

Still, once she arrived, she insisted, “I’m fine! I don’t know what she did, but it’s gone now, and I’m fine.”

“Nuh-uh,” Alex said, arms crossed, brow furrowed, mouth twisted up. Worried—not just worried, but concerned. “Even if you’re fine now, we don’t know if there are lasting effects, or if there are residual traces of whatever power she used that _we_ can use to track her down.”

So Kara submitted to scanning, and let her head slowly come up to normal volume, turning her ears out towards the city, listening carefully.

“The scans of your vitals are coming up normal,” Winn said finally, setting the device down and showing Alex the results on his tablet.

“See, I _told_ you, I am fine. This is totally unnecessary.”

When Kara tried to get up, Alex put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back down, and Kara let her. It was a little comforting, the fussing, but it also made her feel awful, because she didn’t need it.

“None of the human victims remember what happened in there,” Maggie said. “Do you?”

While Alex was keeping close to Kara’s side, her hand still on her shoulder, posture still angled towards her protectively, Maggie stood back, leaning away, managing to look down her nose at Kara. The thoughts that had flown through her head in the vault whispered back, and she pulled out of Alex’s grasp, embarrassed, overcorrecting.

“I felt like the walls of the vault were closing in on me,” she said, simplifying, “like I was suffocating.”

“Sounds like she made you feel claustrophobic,” Alex guessed, and Kara bristled.

“Supergirl doesn’t have claustrophobia.”

“You used to have episodes like that sometimes when you first came to Earth.”

“That was a long time ago.” Kara pushed up off the bed and started towards the door. “We need to find out who she is and how to track her.”

“Well, at the moment, you’re our best clue,” J’onn said, and then his eyes glowed red.

Kara kept repeating to herself the comforting fact that Kryptonian minds were impenetrable to Martians, but after what happened in the vault, she wasn’t as certain. Could she really claim to be invulnerable, unassailable, unstoppable, after that? Could she still protect the planet in her care? Did she still deserve to?

“Well,” he finally said, eyes fading to their usual dark brown disguise, “she’s definitely a psychic, but she’s not like me. There are traces of a particular type of psionic interference in your mind, the type only used by metahumans.”

_Oh. Duh. Earth has both; humans love metaphors. Way to drop the ball on this one._

“Okay, well, I’ll start combing through the metahuman database,” Winn offered, and darted off.

“In the mean time, I’ll monitor potential targets for unusual activity.”

“If we locate her,” Kara promised, “I’ll take her down.”

Alex protested “It’s not safe—” but Kara just cut her off.

“She caught me off guard last time. It’s not gonna happen again.”

 

☆

 

Lena was actually almost at L Corp when she got a call from Sam. “Is everything alright?”

“Uh, no, actually. I’m so sorry, I don’t think I can make this next appointment, something’s up with Ruby.”

“Oh, god, is _she_ alright?”

“She’s fine, there was some sort of incident with another girl, they won’t tell me anything until I get to the school.”

The light turned green, but Lena shook her head at Georgie, and he remained in park. Thankfully, rush hour had died down, and there was nobody headed downtown at their intersection, so nobody started honking after them. “And it’s outside city limits. Don’t worry. Take all the time you need, we can reschedule with the board. God knows, the more time I have between visits with them, the better.”

“Thank you. Seriously, thank you.”

“Of course. Go take care of things with Ruby, L Corp will still be waiting for you when you’re done.”

“And CatCo,” Sam said, almost embarrassed. “Did those résumés I sent over help? I know more about the digital side of digital media than the media side, but I’ve worked for enough companies that I have a pretty long call sheet for executive-level do-nothings.”

“They were great. Thank you for the assist.”

“I’ll make some one-on-one calls whenever I have a minute, try and keep us mostly on schedule even if I can’t make it in person.”

“Sounds good. See you later.”

And, with her schedule suddenly clear and the reminder of Sam’s work ethic, both past and present, fresh in her mind, Lena was suddenly of a mind to be petty and corporate.

“Georgie, can you loop back to CatCo? I need to take care of some things there.”

So Lena spend the rest of the morning walking around from floor to floor, asking questions, figuring out what people thought of Cat’s leadership and of James’, what they wanted and what they needed, what lacked and needed shoring up and what could be minimized.

She almost didn’t want to set up a news room meeting when she got the next general alert—the third bank robbery in one day, and all in the same area, certainly was suspicious, and there was no way Kara would be back in time—but skipping over a department would be useless, especially one that worked as closely with both editors-in-chief, so she went, and tried not to think too hard about anything but the news staff’s thoughts on story allocation and coffee pot etiquette.

Once the meeting let out, she had officially finished every department. And it was barely one in the afternoon.

And Kara was just outside the door, with James, looking as put-together as she had before running off for the first two bank heists. Lena was relieved, and hated that she was relieved, and hated hating that she was relieved.

“I’m sorry, I tried to make it work, but it just—”

“Good meeting? Was it good?” James asked, hands on his hips.

“Yeah, I was just going around to all the departments, asking them for their thoughts on what CatCo needs in a CEO.” She turned towards Kara, just a little, not even pausing for breath, and said, “I really missed you there.”

Because she had. Yikes.

And Kara’s phone went off, again, before she could react. “Shoot. I—I really have to take this.”

“Go, you’re fine.”

Kara left, and then it was just Lena and James in a sea of reporters trying to look like they weren’t listening in.

“So, did you think that I wouldn’t want to be there? Is that why you didn’t tell me?”

“To be honest, I didn’t want you there because I was asking about you, and even if I wasn’t, you’ve already given me your opinion.” Before James could interject, she started towards the boss-only elevator and pressed a random button, watching him follow her in. Once the doors closed, she continued. “You don’t want someone else taking any power away from you, even if only in a symbolic title, but you also don’t want to fully step into the shoes you’ve been filling for a year by claiming the title for yourself. Because you’ve been fulfilling the role for a while now, James, internally and outside the company. Half your staff were confused when I told them you weren’t actually CEO, and _they work for you at a media company._ ”

James’ arms had migrated into a tightly crossed position. “I’ve been running this company for a year.”

“And everybody knows that. But nobody knows why you won’t just take the title. So, Mr. Olsen, off the record—are you scared of responsibility, or of change?”

“You’re out of line.”

“Maybe if we were equals. But all day, you’ve been calling me Ms. Luthor, like we’re strangers, even though we’re not, so I have to assume we’re acting like we only know each other professionally, and professionally, I outrank you.” Lena crossed her arms right back at him, and jutted her chin. “So, which is it?”

James said nothing as they moved a solid half dozen floors, and Lena started counting in her head how many were left until the lobby.

“This was only supposed to be a temporary position,” he said, once she’d gotten down to eighteen remaining. “Cat takes a year’s sabbatical to find herself, or whatever, and then she comes back and runs the empire and I can go back to being art editor, and not having to deal with all the scrutiny.”

“You were Superman’s best friend. _Publicly._ You were in _newspapers_ together.”

“Yeah, and it was a lot, and I got hurt. And I came out here to avoid that.”

“And because he asked you to.”

“Maybe. So?”

Lena gave in, and leaned against the burnished metal wall, staring at the doors. “It isn’t fair to ask you to commit to a job you don’t want, and I’m sorry that I have to, and I’m sorry that I did it the way that I have.”

“Thank you.” James leaned against the side wall and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I’m sorry that I’ve been weird today, with the whole ‘Ms. Luthor’ thing. You do currently own my job, and it’s weird to navigate.”

“Cat Grant owned your job, did you call _her_ ‘Ms.—?’”

“Oh, absolutely. No way am I calling her ‘Cat’ to her face.”

“You could own CatCo if you wanted to,” Lena reminded him, and then herself, “but you want her to come back, so things can be how you planned when you came out here. James Olsen, art editor, as anonymous as a Pulitzer-winning photographer with ties to the most famously powerful people on the planet can be.”

“Exactly.” James shrugged. “Marsdin is on her second term, already two years in. Another two, and Cat—”

“Cat?”

 _“Ms. Grant_ will be back. And I’m not gonna be the one sitting in her chair.”

“You already are.”

“Or who sat some stranger down in it.” James glanced over. “Did you ask Kara?”

_“Yes.”_

“And?”

“And… she asked me if I thought the city needed her more as a CEO or as Supergirl. What I would do if I were in her shoes.”

“And you chose Supergirl.”

“I didn’t choose anything. She made her own choices, and I’m sorry if you don’t like living with them.”

“Uh-huh.”

Lena regretted sequestering them in an elevator that only stopped on two floors for this conversation. Ten floors still remained, and there was no way to get out and avoid the rest of whatever she seemingly couldn’t stop herself from saying.

“Kara doesn’t think she’s ready to be a CEO, and push comes to shove, the world can survive without CatCo, but I can’t imagine we’ll stay safe for long as a planet if our own Girl of Steel doesn’t put in some face time.”

“So you can’t ask her to do something she doesn’t want, but you can ask me?”

“She doesn’t want to be Supergirl right now, either,” Lena muttered, “or hadn’t you noticed her summer off? I swear, everyone is taking time off. Cat Grant, Snapper Carr, Supergirl—who’s next?”

“I don’t know.” There was a moment’s pause, enough time for them to slip another few floors closer to the ground, and then: “So, why aren’t you talking to Kara? And why is she running around trying to get your attention like we’re in middle school or something?”

“I didn’t go to middle school,” Lena said absently, inspecting her fingernails. “I skipped four years.”

“Nice evasion there, _Ms. Luthor.”_

“Thanks, _Jimmy.”_

Finally, they hit the lobby, and Lena piled out of the elevator and headed for the door. She might as well follow Sam’s example until things settled down at the end of the day, work from home, keep busy.

God forbid she have more time to process feelings, whether they were hers or someone else’s, because actions aside, she was definitely not in the mood.

 

☆

 

Finally, the thief struck again, and Kara had something to do.

And if that something involved some very frustrated laser-eyes being thrown around, well, that was her business.

“Trying to sneak up on a psychic?”

“Almost worked,” Kara retorted. At this point, it wasn’t calculated bravado to outrank her foe; she was just trying to keep it together.

And then the first wave of whatever power she was throwing around hit, and almost took Kara down at the knee, and it became very clear that she would not be able to keep it together.

“Supergirl,” came Alex’s voice in her ear, “are you alright?”

Kara had no answer, and no energy to put towards concocting and conveying one. Everything she had was funneled into keeping herself functional in the face of fear.

It was fear, and she was _scared_ , so much more terrified than she’d been for most of her adult life, and she didn’t know, or want to know, how to handle it. She just wanted it to stop.

And then, for a moment, it did, and she could hear, in another strange flash of memory, her father’s voice, speaking words she couldn’t quite place.

“Someone else has come to play,” the thief said, stopped cold in her tracks.

She tilted her head, and Kara’s heart stopped. “J’onn.”

“Your friend should be careful.”

Kara couldn’t get a warning out fast enough, and she could then hear his pained cry through the comms as Psi took advantage of whatever shield he’d created to reach into his mind and make him afraid, too.

“Just you and me, now.”

The fight was over quickly, even though Kara got a few good hits in, even dealing the first frosty blow. As soon as the thief got up from where she fell, she hit Kara with a blast so powerful that the glass windows of some butt-ugly Jeep parked behind her shattered.

“Mind over matter,” she teased, and reality blurred as Kara was thrown back into another memory, one that didn’t just fill her with fear, but with the ache of loss, too.

 _Kara,_ her mother said, face clear only because it looked like Aunt Astra’s did when Kara saw her two years ago. Over her shoulder, Kara’s father’s face was an indistinct blur, just like his voice was, because he was gone.

They were all gone, and she could do nothing. She was powerless.

 _Kara,_ her mother repeated, drawing her attention back, _I love you so much._

 _Ieiu,_ Kara said, useless, wanting to reach for her outstretched hand and incapable of doing so without falling.

_Because of the Earth’s yellow sun, you will have great powers on this planet. You will do extraordinary things. Protect him, Kara, with that power._

Kara tried to tell her, _I can’t, I couldn’t, I was too late, you should have kept me with you because then at least we could’ve been together,_ but then the shields were down, and she was trapped, jettisoned into empty space to watch her home burn to nothingness with everyone she’d ever known or loved stuck there, and Kal, a baby stranger, flying away out of her reach, leaving her behind. Nowhere, with no one, and nothing.

“Supergirl!”

And then, suddenly, she was sprawled face-down on the concrete of the parking complex outside National City Savings & Loan, gasping for abundant air, her sister’s voice in her ear.

“I’m here,” she wheezed, and then, just for herself, “I’m here.”

She kept repeating the mantra to herself as she flew, and it reminded her of something else from Krypton—something pleasant, actually, rather than painful and horrific. Another blurry image of her father as an indistinct, featureless shape, meditating; this time, his voice was clear, and she could hear him speak.

By the time she landed, Kara was together enough that she thought she could handle debriefing, and even J’onn’s apology for failing to protect her.

“She’s more powerful than any psychic I have ever encountered.”

“What happened this time?” Alex asked.

“It was the same as before,” Kara lied, because she had definitely miscalculated. There was no way talking about it would be survivable, not in the middle of the control room, with random agents milling about, watching her.

It was clear from the look on Alex’s face that she didn’t believe her, but thankfully Winn interrupted with information on their thief.

“Gayle Marsh, law-abiding citizen of Skokie, Illinois, until one day she snapped and went on a bank-robbing spree. Uh, let’s see,” he said, projecting her file onto the main monitors, “authorities nicknamed her ‘Psi’ after a string of _psy_ chologically-enhanced robberies which ravaged a series of small-town banks throughout the Midwest a couple months ago.”

Kara tried to look at the sweet, smiling coveralls-clad woman in the photograph, and couldn’t quite manage it because her heart was suddenly pounding wildly in her throat, so ferocious it shook her field of vision with every pulse.

Alex braced her hands on the main console. “Where do we go from here?”

“Well, now that we know a little bit more, I thought I might start trying to adapt our psychic dampening technology to stop her.”

Kara’s pounding heart picked up the pace again, and she barely managed to wait until they split up to get to work before dragging him aside, hissing, “I need to talk to you.”

They got all the way down to the testing gym, which was normally totally deserted, since they hadn’t recruited any new powered people in a while, before either of them said anything.

“This is all very covert-ops,” Winn said to break the silence. “I like it.”

“I know how she’s doing it. I felt it this time.” Kara sucked in a shaky breath. “She’s targeting people’s fear.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I felt it. I saw my mother. I saw Krypton explode.” Kara could hear her voice breaking, wet and unsteady, like she was about to cry. It was horrible; thank goodness nobody else was there to see it. “I relived my last moments there, and then being stuck, floating through space for so long, knowing I could never have my life back. Psi put me back in that pod, completely trapped and alone.

“It was… it was so _quiet_ … Silence was the worst part. I felt completely cut off from everything and everyone I have ever known.” Finally, with it all out there, Kara could pull herself together, just enough to keep moving. “We have to stop her, Winn.”

“You should tell J’onn, Alex, Lena—she could help, with the device—”

“No. They can’t know, they’ll just worry. You have to be the one to solve this, that’s why I’m telling you. You did stuff like this all the time without Lena’s help before, you can do it again now. Please.” When he said nothing, Kara pressed on. “You’re already altering the psychic dampeners, this will help, right?”

“Yeah, I mean, knowing that she’s targeting fear centers, sure.”

“Good,” Kara said, and then she turned and started back towards the stairs.

“Hey.” Winn reached out and touched her shoulder, very carefully, like she would break. Awful. “Hey, I’m—I’m sorry that this is happening—If—I—”

“I’ll be fine.”

Kara pulled away, and zipped off to CatCo. Hopefully, Lena was gone, and James wouldn’t have seen anything about the robberies, so nobody would try and talk to her, and everything would be okay.

Just in case, she took the stairs on her way up, and she stayed at her desk, working quietly with her head low until she got a call from Alex.

“Kara? She hit another bank.”

“I’m on my way.”

Kicking her bag under her desk, Kara walked over to the bathroom and ducked into the one stall with a window, up too high to reach for most people. She closed and locked the stall behind herself, and even though she’d chosen to do so, had gone in completely prepared to change and fly out, as soon as the tiny stall was sealed, Kara couldn’t breathe.

There was no wave of imagery this time, no memory dragged up just to hit her where it hurt most, but her body remembered, and went through the motions of the memory—the suffocation, the panic, the sense of being trapped and alone. She ripped at the buttons on her shirt, not to disrobe and fly off, but to try and ease the tightness around—inside—her chest and throat.

It didn’t help. She was still starved for air, helpless, isolated, adrift.

Only when someone else passed the bathroom door, complaining that the water cooler was empty on every floor but accounting, did Kara finally regain enough control to shuck her work clothes and launch herself out the window.

“Supergirl?” Alex said in her earpiece.

A hand over her racing heart and filling lungs, Kara sighed, “I’m here. I’m on my way.”

There was a pause, and then: “She escaped.”

_Oh, no. She’s getting stronger._

Except, according to Winn, she wasn’t. “Looks like you just had a good old human panic attack.”

“No. No, I’m stronger than that,” Kara said. She didn’t say, _I have to be_ , but she could taste it on the back of her tongue like rising bile, how horrible, how wrong, it would be if she couldn’t do the one thing she was supposed to: be strong enough to protect people, no matter what.

“Look,” he said, placating, “she got in your head, okay? And she’s forcing you to relive some serious trauma. That is gonna take a toll on anyone, I don’t care if you’re the strongest person in the world, which…” He gestured, waving a hand Kara’s way, like _duh._

Which, yeah, _duh,_ she is the strongest person in the world. That’s why this isn’t supposed to happen.

“Look, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I never said I was ashamed.”

And then Alex appeared, and if Kara hadn’t been ashamed before, she definitely was after.

 

☆

 

By maybe five, five thirty, Lena was done making all the calls she could possibly have made to investors and board members whose meetings got pushed back. She’d weighed in so they didn’t blame Sam, she’d weighed in so they didn’t blame her, she’d weighed in so they were excited to show up the next day and wouldn’t be dicks about it. She only really had two more people adjacent to her to-do list: Sam, to see how she and Ruby were doing, and Kara, to get the Edge file and absolutely nothing more. Or maybe dinner. Things were still up in the air.

Still, she called Sam first, because calling Kara would be some kind of admission, or permission, and she didn’t want to think about the implications.

“Hey, Sam, I was just calling to see how things were going. I hope everything’s alright.”

“Yeah, we’re okay. Um, just one second, I’m—dinner.”

“Of course.”

Lena listened as Sam ran down a flight of steps, opened a door, spoke to someone—delivery—and then closed it again before she resumed speaking.

“So sorry again about today. My daughter had an issue at school. It’s never happened before.”

“Don’t worry about it. Is tomorrow still good?”

“Yes, I pushed all the meetings to tomorrow, I’ve gone through the charts for the presentation, it should not be an issue.”

“I know it won’t. Really, it’s all fine.”

“Thank you again for being so understanding.”

“Not at all.”

“Okay, great.”

“If want to go over things together tonight, I can come by the office,” Lena offered, “it won’t be an issue.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks, _again._ I’ll see you tonight.”

“See you tonight.”

Maybe this was just another case of Lena running her business on guilt or some other base emotion, but if anyone deserved some leeway, it was Sam. Especially after how she’d helped, for no reason other than to help, last spring. She wasn’t in National City, she had no real personal reason to try and block Rhea from L Corp’s systems, she didn’t even know the full extent of what was happening. She just saw a problem on the other side of the continent and stepped in to help.

So, yeah, maybe Lena was cutting her some slack, being nicer than she should be, but at least she was doing something good with it.

 

☆

 

Kara got off work at five, even though she’d been in and out all day and functionally useless whenever she was at her desk, and went straight home. She could have—should have—gone to Lena’s instead, to her office or her apartment to drop off the file, but she didn’t, because just thinking about going, just thinking about asking _where_ she should go, made her chest tighten up like someone was crushing her lungs in their fist.

So, instead, she went home, and she knelt on the floor in the sunniest spot in her apartment, with her arms crossed over her chest, palms up, fingers curling in, the way she could half-remember having seen it done. The posture felt weird; there was a sort of unfamiliar pull in her forearms, and just forcing her fingers to relax when she wanted to either flex them straight out or curl them into actual fists was more effort than it should have been, but eventually she managed it, and then the words just sort of fell into place.

_“Rao, sokaofidh nahn wa khuhp i ehrosh ni divi. Rao, sokaokypzrhiges wa khuhp i raoghrys.”_

Again and again, she repeated it. Words she hadn’t heard in a long time, words she hadn’t spoken in what felt like forever, came out with growing clarity and certainty, until all she thought or heard was the words, and everything else fell away. No crowded brainspace, no white noise of worry or fear; she could push it all out with this remembered phrase and feel better. Stronger. Not so alone.

Which was probably how she managed to talk about it when Alex walked in.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“It’s Kryptonian meditation. We say an ancient mantra to strengthen the mind.”

“Hm.” Alex sat on the coffee table, hands on her knees. “Never seen you do that before.”

“I’ve never felt like I needed it.” Kara shrugged, and looked Alex in the eye. “To be honest, I didn’t even remember it until Psi started knocking around in my head.”

“I’m glad something good came out of her, but she might not be able to do it much longer. Winn’s still working on the psychic dampening technology. By himself, like you asked.” She paused, gaging Kara’s reaction, and then said, _“We_ had a nice chat.”

“Did you.” Now Kara gaged Alex’s reaction, her facial expression, everything. “He just told you everything, as soon as I left the room, huh.”

“Well, he’s not very good at keeping secrets.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Kara said, rising to grab a glass of water, keeping her back to Alex as she drank.

“We used to talk to each other about this kind of stuff! Why didn’t you tell me that you saw Krypton, that you were having panic attacks?”

Kara admitted, “I didn’t want you to worry,” and felt a little lighter for having said it.

“You fight the most dangerous and evil people on the planet,” Alex sighed, “so I’m kind of always going to worry.”

“I don’t know how to fight this one. And I should be able to stop her, but… But then she makes her way into my mind and—and forces me to relive the scariest moment of my life.” Kara sat down on the floor again, put her head in her hands. “It’s… _Ugh._ It’s torture. How am I supposed to deal with that?”

“Well,” Alex said, scooting onto the floor to join her, “by remembering that your fears don’t define you. Who you are as Kara Danvers, who you are as Supergirl, that’s what defines you, and she’s got nothing on that.”

“Who I am as Supergirl feels broken. I can’t—I can’t trust that I’m not causing more harm than good, that I’m not making bad choices. _Especially_ when my emotions get the best of me, when I’m afraid, or when I feel lost, or alone.” Kara sucked in a breath and let it out, slumping. “And Lena keeps avoiding me, and not telling me things, which is new and horrible, and I feel like—I know it’s my fault, but I can’t fix it. I’m _trying_ to be myself again, and do the right thing, but everything that used to feel right and make me feel good, like a relief, has disappeared, and now I just feel… guilty, and lonely, and scared, and stuck.”

“It’s not always gonna feel like that,” Alex offered, “I promise.”

“I was supposed to be this protector. Strong and capable and in control, who knew the right thing to do and did it. And all the bad stuff, I can push it aside, because it doesn’t help me be what I need to be, and she’s taking that away from me. If I don’t even have myself, what do I have?”

Alex shrugged. “You got me.”

“Well, I know _that_ , silly,” Kara retorted thickly, and she wasn’t even embarrassed to cry a little on Alex’s shirt when they hugged.

By the time they both got an alert—not general, for once, because it seemed someone had finally upgraded any mention of Psi to a higher threat level—she felt a lot readier to face whatever nightmare Psi was going to throw her way. Not totally unassailable, but at least a little more resilient. She could handle this, totally.

And catching that wrecking ball, as easily as a wiffle ball, and seeing that mom and the daughter she was ready to die to save both escape alive and unharmed, felt good. Felt right.

She felt ready, _strong,_ even, when she took the psionic inhibitor off her belt and aimed it. “Psi!”

Psi turned, and looked Supergirl dead in the eyes, and then jerked her head forward like she was trying to break someone’s nose. The inhibitor managed to block some of the blast, and Kara managed to withstand the rest of it without being felled, but she could feel the wide open space of the partially-evacuated street shrinking a little at the edges, her chest going all tight, her throat closing.

“‘Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home. Your house is on fire, and your children… they _will_ burn.’” Psi closed in, only a few feet away, and when she sent a second wave of fear at Kara, it might as well have been a wrecking ball for how it hit, sending her flying back a full city block. She would’ve gone further if not for the building she crashed into, which, thankfully was already fully evacuated.

She hit the steps below, barely managing to stop herself from smashing them, too, and tried to find her footing. There were still people to save, still a dangerous person to stop before she could hurt somebody else—

But Kara was back in the pod, trapped and alone, watching everything burn. Not just Krypton, but Earth, everything she’d rebuilt. Alex, lost or dead like Jeremiah—her fault. Eliza, too, just for knowing them, just for knowing her, even without crossing Cadmus’ path. Lena, in Cadmus captivity, experimented on for the Luthors’ hubris or for Rhea’s plotting, powerless to save herself.

And Kara, watching it all happen, separated by a pane of glass she couldn’t break through, because she was powerless, too. Too weak to protect her cousin, too weak to protect her old family or the one she’d built in the wake of their loss, too weak to make the right call or live with the consequences. Too weak to help anyone.

Lena, trapped and tortured. Alex, dead and alone. Her mother at court in a crumbling building, roof split to expose her to the burning atmosphere; father, in his lab, saying something over a gel matrix—not the mantra, but something else, something with just as much weight behind a meaning she couldn’t quite grasp.

Kara pounded on the glass, sobbing, calling out their names and endless apologies, and they all just turned and looked at her. Everyone she couldn’t protect, everyone she couldn’t save, every face she’d ever seen, even passing strangers—they all turned to face her and said, as one heartbreaking chorus, _why won’t you help us?_

_Because I’m too weak. I’m sorry._

“Kara? Hey, it’s me.”

The voice wasn’t hollow, but it was familiar, even though it took a second to place it: Alex. Alex was here.

“It’s okay,” she said, “you’re okay.”

“I can’t do it. I can’t keep you safe, can’t keep anyone safe.”

“Hey, no, that’s not true.”

“Everything I do, every choice I make, people just get hurt. Even when I do what I think is right, people get hurt. Just like my mom, like my aunt, every choice I make has consequences that I can’t protect people from.” Kara looked up, and saw Alex’s living, breathing face, and wondered how long it would be until her vision came true. “It’s all my fault.”

“What? Kara, that’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not. It’ll be my fault when you die, when Lena dies, when anyone, everyone, dies. I’m not good enough.”

“That’s not true. You’re not—”

“I’m _not!_ And I’m not going to be able to fix this, or anything, and everyone will burn up, and I’ll be alone again, and that’s the last thing I want but it’ll be my fault, too!”

“Kara, listen to me. You’re not alone, okay? And you will never be alone. We love you, all of us, and we can take care of ourselves. You don’t have to know what we need, you don’t have to burn yourself up just to keep us safe. Nobody is dying today, and nobody is leaving you behind or sending you away.”

“My own mom sent me away,” Kara sobbed, fingers digging into the concrete like clay. “And I couldn’t even do what she sent me away for.”

“You were just a kid, okay? No parent should ask that of their child, and you are not going to make her mistakes. You’re not just Kara Zor-El, okay? And you’re not just Kara Danvers, or Supergirl, or Earth’s champion. You are whoever you decide to be, and you know better than that.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah, you do. Because everybody on this planet, right now, is alive and safe because of you.”

The screams from everyone who hadn’t escaped Psi’s range filtered in, and Kara shook her head. “They’re not.”

“You’ve saved them all before,” Alex assured her, “countless times. You can save them all again.”

“I—I can. Okay.” Kara took a shaky breath, and felt the last of Psi’s presence in her mind fade. “Alex—”

“Go get her.”

So Kara did. She took off, flying down the street, the words in her head not terrifying, but encouraging: _you can save them all; you have great power because of this world’s yellow sun; Supergirl is the Champion of Earth, and with her in that position, we are safe, forever;Rao sokaokypzhriges wa khuhp i raoghrys; Kara Danvers, you are my hero; ahghah im utoi, shesur i._

Those words finally clicked, and she almost stumbled as she dropped out of the sky to face Psi for the last time. _Oh._

“You’re not going anywhere!” she shouted, this time to Psi’s face. No hiding, no tricks.

Psi cocked her head. “Hm. What did you see? I wonder.”

 _She can’t see your fears,_ Kara realized, _only make_ you _see them._ _Good to know._

“What brought the Girl of Steel to her knees?” Psi asked, and fired off another wave of fear.

Kara let it hit, let it wash through her, let it pass.

_I can save them all; I’m her hero; I can stop her._

“A lie.”

“Fear is not a lie,” Psi said, sending another pulse of fear at Kara.

This one was harder, faster, and Kara walked right into the thick of it—walked through it, like it wasn’t there.

Incredulity crossed Psi’s face, and she insisted, “Fear cripples, annihilates spirits. It is the _only_ weapon that matters.”

Another pulse. Kara shut her eyes against the false image of the sidewalks creeping in around her, and then opened them again: everything was as it should be.

“Fear made me stronger than you.” Psi fired off a third blast, this one from less than a foot away.

It had all the impact of that wiffle ball wrecking ball; it was like nothing. It was nothing.

“No one is safe from it!” Psi looked Supergirl up and down, hunting for a tell, a tremor or some shield against her power. When she spoke again, she wasn’t even trying for intimidating. “Why aren’t you scared anymore?” she asked, voice uncertain, unsteady.

_Ahghah im utoi, shesur i._

“Mind over matter.”

Psi went down like a bag of bricks.

 

☆

 

With the attack downtown, Lena didn’t want to make Sam try and get to L Corp, so instead, she just sent her her home address. Again, maybe a mistake, maybe a gamble made on emotion instead of logic, but fuck it. Traffic would be hell for them both, and Lena’s apartment was further from the wreckage than her office was.

And the city had almost been back to normal, too.

“I’m so glad you could make it!”

“Thank you so much for being so understanding.”

“God, please, no. I am no stranger to family drama. Come in!”

“Are you sure it’s alright that I’m here?” Sam asked, hovering in her doorway.

“Please. You stopped invaders from poisoning the water supply with company property; I think I can trust you not to plant a bug in my bathroom.” Lena poured herself a glass of water, and offered Sam the same, but was waved off. “Is everything taken care of with your daughter?”

“Yeah. I was, um, I was downtown when Supergirl fought that woman, in all the leather. My daughter was there.”

“Oh, my god. Are you both alright?”

“We’re fine. Ruby—” Sam laughed, a little shaken, still. “God, she is so smart, but she’s still so young. She knows how to get what she wants, but she doesn’t think about the consequences, and I can’t handle it if she gets hurt. I can’t handle not being able to protect her.”

Eyes falling to the planner she’d left on the coffee table, Lena nodded, murmuring, “I can see that.”

“It’s like, when she’s in trouble, when I even _think_ she might be in trouble, everything else disappears. I have tunnel vision until I know she’s okay.” Sam looked up from her hands, looked Lena in the eyes. “That’s not exactly something you want to hear from the person you’re trusting to help run your company.”

“I knew what kind of person you were when I offered you this job, Ms. Arias, that’s why I offered it to you.”

Sam looked a little stunned by the admission, but before she could respond, a knock came at the door. “Oh. I didn’t know you were expecting company. I can—”

“No, no, don’t worry.” Even without x-ray vision, Lena knew who was on the other side of the door, and she felt strangely calm about it all. “This is another work thing, CatCo, just some files being dropped off. Won’t be a minute; do you mind..?”

“Go ahead.”

Lena went to the door and opened it just wide enough to step out into the hall. Sure enough, there was Kara, hair still up as neatly as it had been that morning.

“Hi,” she said, voice soft.

“Hi,” Lena said back. “Is everything alright?”

“Um.” Kara blinked. “Yeah. The thing downtown, I handled it. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you these earlier.” She dug into her bag and pulled out the files on Edge.

“No, no, it’s alright.” Lena touched her wrist, rather than taking them right away. “You had something you needed to handle. I get it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Lena’s heart caught in her throat, and she swallowed around it before she could say something stupid, taking the files. “Um, I have a contact, at Edge’s bank. I wrote it down, actually, in my planner—it might be useful, for your, for _CatCo’s,_ investigation.”

Kara beamed. “Really? That’s amazing, Lena, thank you.”

“No problem. Come in, for just a sec, I left it inside. There’s actually someone here I want you to meet.”

And so they both walked in, Lena angling towards the coffee table, Kara hovering in the doorway in much the same way Sam had.

Lena bent to pick it up, then leafed towards the back for one of the tear-out pages where she’d written her contact’s information. “Uh, Kara, this is Samantha Arias. She’s my—”

“New CFO,” Kara said brightly, crossing with her hand outstretched to shake. “I’ve heard really great things.”

“Oh! Thank you.”

“And Sam, this is Kara Danvers—”

“Oh, my god, of course!” Sam shook her hand, grinning. “My daughter, she has all your articles about National City’s heroes on a board in her room.”

Kara’s eyes widened, somewhere between delight and uncertain shock, and briefly flitted over to Lena before looking away. “No way!”

“Yeah, she’s… she’s got a thing about superpowers, but what twelve-year-old doesn’t, am I right?”

Lena nodded, and walked over. “Uh, Kara, here’s that contact I was telling you about.”

“Great!” Kara took the page, carefully not brushing their fingers as she did. Still, Lena couldn’t help but notice the way she ran the pad of her thumb over the lines of Lena’s handwriting, the indentations they made in the paper. “Thank you. This is… this will be so helpful.”

“I’m glad it’s of value to you.” Lena hovered there, for a moment, unsure of how to navigate. “I, um, let me show you out.”

“Oh. Yes, I’m sorry for interrupting.”

“Not at all,” Lena said, walking her to the door.

Once again, they were alone in the hallway; once again, Lena closed the door, back pressed against it.

“I—I want to apologize,” Kara said, as soon as it clicked shut, “for how I acted today. It was unprofessional, and I should have been there.”

“Nonsense.”

“No, it’s—I’m still getting used to, um, balancing things. Again. And I let that interfere when you asked for me, and shouldn’t have let that happen.” Kara swallowed. “And it won’t happen again. When— _if_ , if you ever need me, I’ll be there.”

The distinction definitely soothed over some of the sore spots Lena had been nursing, and she smiled, without trying to. “You’ve only been back at it for a day. It’s okay that there are still… rough patches. An adjustment period. Right?”

Kara looked her over, a long, lingering look. “Right,” she finally said, voice very quiet. “Lots of things have changed.”

“Yes. Not everything, though.”

“Not everything?”

Lena shook her head. On impulse, she stretched up, put her hands on either side of Kara’s face, nearly closed the space between them. At the last second, though, before either of them had moved, or even drawn breath, she let go, and sank back down to her flat feet. “Goodnight, Kara,” she murmured, reaching for the doorknob.

“Goodnight, Lena.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you guys for understanding about the week-long hiatus! this chapter is up a little late, but that's because i had some distracting deadlines i was trying to meet early (did it!) and then, just for funsies, i threw in last episode's missing scene with Edge in time out because it's fun and i could make it fit thematically!!! besides, this chap is almost 14k words, so, you're welcome
> 
> anyways, the angst rolls on, and i'm still up in the air on whether or not i wanna do non-supercorp POVs in this, but whatever! i'm having a fun time!
> 
> if you made it all the way to the end of this, congratulations! feel free to yell about whatever you want in the comments, because i thirst for feedback and i need something to do until Killing Eve premieres
> 
> also, the Kryptonian mantra Kara says here is different than in the show, because the show used a correct grammatically incorrect transliteration without citing the person whose research and website they used, and they actually corrected it here. i also used the references from that site to translate the words Kara remembers her dad saying:"ahghah im utoi, shesur I" means "mind over matter," and there's a reason it's here, and i'm not telling you what it is, but feel free to theorize


	3. S3write Ep 03: Far From The Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Supergirl is out of town, helping J'onn on a personal mission, Kara leaves Lena with a personal mission of her own to complete, and Eliza throws Alex and Maggie a joint bridal shower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Head's up: there is no homophobia plot line in this chapter. i'm not doing it, i don't wanna write it, i don't like reading it, and i didn't enjoy watching it. plus, that felt so painfully Very Special Episode and didn't actually make sense in-universe, considering s2!Maggie went to her aunt's house via bus and President Marsdin isn't Trump and there appears to be no Trump in their world but s3 would have us believe that there's still a wall happening and Maggie's aunt was driving distance from her dad's house and she got driven there by him 
> 
> also, remember: whatever isn't on-screen either happens as it did in canon or isn't from a POV character's POV
> 
> Also, I didn't do the canon "Maggie invites her dad and it's all angsty" story line bc

From the balloons by the doorway to the leftover craft ribbon on the kitchen counter, it kind of looked like the bridal aisle at Party City had exploded inside Kara’s apartment. Granted, there was just cause, what with her sister’s bridal shower only days out, and as far as decor went, Eliza had actually restrained herself pretty effectively.

Alex looked a little strained, too; the grimace on her face as she looked at the age-guessing game display had an air of literal reining back, as if someone was pulling on her mouth to minimize the visibility of her distress with it all.

“Well,” she said, “the loft looks great. If we could just burn this, then it would be perfect.”

“No, come on! It’s adorable.”

“Ugh.” Alex turned her back on the board and moved into the kitchen. Whatever her target, though, she got sidetracked by the neatly stacked monogrammed paper napkins, and the grimace returned with a vengeance. “I don’t know why I thought throwing a lesbian wedding shower would curb Mom’s cheesy antics.”

“Nope! Gay, straight, whatever, Eliza will _not_ be stopped until she digs up every bridal shower game since the beginning of time.” Kara laughed, plucking one game piece out of its storage bag and dangling it by a corner between them. “You know what? You’re gonna _love_ bridal bingo.”

“Kill me now. Please.”

Kara set the bingo card down and leaned against the island. “You know that if you’re really unhappy with her making a fuss like this, she’ll scale it back, right? She’s just happy because you’re happy.”

Alex thinned her lips and set down the crumpled napkin in her hand with a shrug. “I don’t know. I feel like, for so long, she didn’t get what I was doing with my life—she didn’t like that I was gone so often when she thought I was a regular M.D., she didn’t like it when she found out I worked for the same organization she thought killed Dad… Now that I’m engaged, I feel like I’m finally doing something we can talk about without her making that face.”

“What face?”

“You know the face! The ‘I don’t approve, but I can’t forbid it because you’d just do it anyway, so I’m just going to look vaguely disappointed and offended by your choices’ face.” Then, to prove her point, Alex demonstrated, managing a pretty accurate imitation of her mother’s posture and mannerisms. Her eyebrows went sky-high, and her chin lifted a little bit, and then she settled down like she was schooling her features.

Kara definitely recognized the expression; she’d just never seen it turned at herself from Eliza. From Alex, though, she’d seen it a couple of times—through the window of _that_ plane, once the relief faded; whenever she caught her lying to Lena last year. “Huh. I just always thought that was her ‘I’m worried about you, Alex’ face.”

“Nope. It’s the disappointed disapproval face.”

Kara picked up the discarded napkin and started worrying it between her hands. “Oh.”

“Yeah. And I really don’t want to be walking around under it when I meet Maggie’s aunt for the first time.”

“How have you not met her already?”

“She travels a lot, but she never seemed to make it out to National City.” Alex shrugged. “Over the summer, she was going backpacking through the redwoods, and I thought she might swing by, but she didn’t.”

“Huh. Well, at least now you get the chance to get to know her, right?”

“Yeah. She’s staying with Maggie—with us. So. Lots of one-on-one time.”

“So that’s why Eliza is staying at a hotel.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And why I’m hosting?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, that makes sense. Give them some privacy to reconnect, some space for the three of you—and saddling a guest with party cleanup? Of course not.”

Alex nodded, then took the napkin out of Kara’s hands, smoothing it out and sticking it at the bottom of the stack. “How are you doing?” she asked pointedly.

“Fine. Great.” Kara could hear her voice squeaking, could feel Alex’s eyes on her, expectant. “What’s going on with me has nothing to do with you and Maggie.”

“Is it stuff with Lena, or—?”

“She’s great. She’s good, really; she’s helping her new CFO settle in to her new role, a new city, balancing all that and a daughter.” Kara, without a napkin to shred, resorted to twisting her fingers together, wondering reflexively what had made Alex stiffen up. “We talked a little, the other night, about… avoidance, and stuff. We’re still us, it’s just other things getting in the way.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But I could not be happier for you.”

“I know,” Alex said softly, looking down. “It means a lot.”

 _That_ felt loaded, but before Kara could get answers, or even figure out the right questions to ask, someone knocked at the door.

“Who _is_ that?” she muttered, peering through the door.

“Please tell me Mom’s not early,” Alex begged, wrinkling her nose and squeezing her eyes shut.

“No, it’s—it’s J’onn.” Kara walked over and opened the door. “Hi. Come on in—is everything okay?”

Something in his bearing, on his face, told her it wasn’t.

“Yeah. Yeah, everything’s great,” he said, walking in and rubbing the back of his neck. “I just needed to talk to you both.”

Kara closed the door, and both she and Alex moved closer, sharing the same concern.

“I have to go away for a few days. I’m gonna need you both to manage the D.E.O. until I get back.”

“Where are you going?” Kara asked.

“Mars.”

Alex’s eyes widened. “You’re— _Mars?”_

“M’gann sent me a message. She needs my help.”

“Help with what?” Kara asked.

J’onn sighed, sinking to sit on the coffee table and scrubbing his hand over his face. “The message was short, urgent. I tried to make contact, but I couldn’t reach her. I can sense that she’s in danger.”

“J’onn, you’re the last Green Martian. The Whites have been trying to kill your kind for centuries, going back would be a suicide mission!”

“Look, M’gann came to our aid when we were in need. I must go for M’gann.”

“If you’re going to Mars,” Alex insisted, “then Kara is going with you.”

Kara nodded, brow furrowed.

“I won’t have you endanger your life just to fight my battles.” J’onn stood, vehement, and shook his head.

“Your battles _are_ my battles, J’onn.”

“I can’t take you away from Alex’s shower,” he said, glancing around at the decorations.

“Are you kidding? If I thought that I could survive Mars, I would be there, fighting by your side.”

“J’onn…” Kara fought back the rising ache at the very thought, and said it anyway. “If Krypton still existed and I had to go back to where my parents were buried under rubble, I know you wouldn’t let me do it alone.”

“You’re sure you can spare her?” J’onn asked.

“National City and the D.E.O. will be fine without Supergirl for a few days. We’ve got the track record to prove it.”

“I meant with…” He glanced around the room again, gesturing at the mountains of bridal memorabilia, the clusters of bobbing balloons. “Eliza’s exuberance.”

“She’ll understand. You’re family, J’onn; she wants you safe and happy, too. She’s probably pack you a lunch or something. A first aid kit.”

“Tell her I’m sorry for cutting her time with one of her daughters short,” J’onn said, giving Alex’s hands a squeeze.

“I’m gonna go suit up,” Kara said, ducking into her bedroom. She called around the door, “And, Alex, if Eliza gets weird, just… I don’t know, fabricate a disaster downtown.”

“There will be no disasters! Real or manufactured. Everything is going to go perfectly.” With one sharp nod, Alex yelled back, “And that goes for you two, too, okay?”

“Okay!” Kara emerged, ready for action. “And dinner’s not going to be a problem?”

“What, me and my mother and my fiancée and her aunt, alone together over dinner, in your apartment because Maggie doesn’t want people over at ours?” Alex gulped, just a little. “I can’t imagine a better evening.”

“Do you want to invite Lena over to help play peace-keeper?”

“Oh, my god, please, yes.”

Kara sent off a quick text— **helping j’onn with something off-world, alex needs reinforcements at dinner, can you come?** —and snuck in an even quicker parting hug before leaving with J’onn.

_Everything is going to be fine. Alex has things handled, and everything is going to be fine._

_Please let everything be fine._

 

☆

 

“Did you have to bring flowers?” Alex grumbled. _“And_ wine?”

Lena marched into the kitchen, hopscotching around decorations to retrieve a vase for the hurried arrangement of peonies, delphinium, and lily-of-the-valley she’d brought. “Eliza likes me so far, and for all I know, Maggie’s aunt just knows of me as ‘that woman my niece arrested that one time.’”

Alex let out a pained groan.

“I’m kidding. _You,_ as our gracious hostess, are to take credit for these—” Lena potted the flowers a little viciously, and then petted them back into a neater shape as if in apology before pulling out the wine. “—and the drinks. I didn’t know what was on the menu, but I made an educated guess.”

“You’re a lifesaver.” Alex grabbed the bottle from Lena, eyeing the label and then looking to her for answers. “Mom’s making lasagna. Yay or nay?”

“Looks good.”

Alex set it down on the table and put her hands on her hips. “And we hide the reserves so Mom doesn’t think I’m somehow corrupting my liquor-proof little sister.”

“I’ll put them in Kara’s closet.”

Lena had good timing, too, because as soon as she shut the closet doors in front of Alex’s secret stash of freezer-fresh vodka, the front door opened, and Eliza walked through with a grocery bag. By the time Lena returned, Alex was already being thoroughly hugged, and Lena thought about maybe crawling back behind Kara’s trousers with the wine and staying there all night.

“And Lena’s here!” Eliza gasped, pulling her into a hug, too. “Oh, it’s so good to see you, even if Kara’s not here.”

Lena floundered a little, torn between formulating an answer for the hanging, if unspoken, question and figuring out how exactly to return the hug.

“She and J’onn are taking care of something on Mars.” Alex started moving the groceries out of their bag and onto the countertop. “A threat or something. He says he’s sorry for stealing her away.”

Eliza rolled her eyes fondly, even as a veil of tension settled around her face. “As long as they both come back safe and happy, I’m glad they’re taking care of it.”

“I’m sure they will,” Lena said, hovering on the fringes of the kitchen. “And they’ll probably regret missing out on all the celebration.”

With a smile, Eliza stepped in and started on some of the prep work, leaving Alex with nothing to do but helicopter over sweating onions.

“Is there anything I can help with?”

“You’re a guest, don’t worry about it,” Eliza and Alex both said simultaneously, with shockingly similar cadences. Lena wondered if Alex was imitating her mother, or if they genuinely were that similar. She sat at the island and ran her fingers through her ends, trying very hard not to look for similarities in her self with people she hated on principle.

After a seemingly interminable stretch of silence broken only by the sound of chopping and sizzling, Eliza asked, very deliberately, about what was going on in their lives, and Alex glanced over her shoulder at Lena, sending a silent plea for a distraction, so Lena swam with sharks while talking about Edge’s clumsy machinations to keep the conversation away from _everyone’s_ personal lives.

“How much does a media empire go for these days?” Eliza asked, half-joking.

“…seven hundred and fifty million dollars.”

Alex nearly spat a mouthful of wine into the skillet. _“What?”_

“It was a smart investment,” Lena mumbled, glaring at her. As Alex’s eyes continued to bug, Lena mouthed, _you owe me so much for this, Danvers._

“Well, from what Kara’s said about him, I’m sure she’s grateful that you stopped Edge from taking over.” Eliza gestured briefly, but emphatically, with her spoon, and then turned back to the stovetop.

Lena smiled in spite of herself, then changed the subject. “That smells incredible. How long until it’s done?”

“Maggie and her aunt… Valerie?”

“I think she goes by Val,” Alex corrected.

“And her aunt Val are coming at eight thirty, so this should come out no later than eight fifteen.”

Everything went according to schedule; at eight fifteen, on the dot, a bubbly and golden tray of lasagna came out of the oven and landed on the table to cool, and at exactly eight thirty, Maggie knocked on the door.

Alex opened it and squeaked, “Hi, Maggie!”

“Hi, babe.”

There was a moment where it looked like Maggie had been going in for a hug while Alex had gone in for a kiss, instead, but they figured it out before things got weird. Then, Maggie pulled back and gestured to the equally short woman at her side. They had the same eyes, but not much else to mark them as family.

“This is my aunt, Val Sawyer,” Maggie said, tugging her inside by the hand.

“It’s so lovely to finally meet you.” Alex hesitated, not sure if she should go in for a hug or a firm handshake; Val, it seemed, was a hugger, and made that decision for her.

“You, too.” Val pulled back, looking Alex up and down with her hands on her shoulders. “I still can’t believe some girl convinced my Maggie to settle down.”

“Oh.”

 _“Val,”_ Maggie hissed.

“Please,” Alex laughed, trying a little too hard for casual, “there are days _I_ don’t believe I managed to.”

They all laughed, some more strained than others, and congregated at the table. Val and Eliza sat at opposite ends of the table, Alex and Maggie facing each other, and Lena between Alex and Eliza in the covertly-designated buffer chair. From her seat, back to the door, Val had the best view of Eliza’s decorations, and as they served themselves, her eyes fell on the bridal board by the couch.

“Is that the board you made for your daughter?” she asked, fork paused between her mouth and the plate.

“Yes, it is. I brought over the supplies for Maggie’s but I couldn’t put it together because she had none of her pictures.”

 _“That,”_ Val said, a little protective, “is because I have them here with me. Varying degrees of quality, but I’ve got every photo of her that exists, all the way up until her college graduation. Then she stopped loafing around for me to sneak snapshots of.”

“More like you went back to globe-hopping once I got a full-time job,” Maggie teased.

“Now I get all my photos of her from Instagram, can you believe it?” Val shook her head. “It keeps me updated on her life, though, even when she doesn’t.”

“Stalker,” Maggie said, grinning.

“We can put one together after dinner, if you’d like,” Eliza offered.

Val smiled around the tines of her fork, chewing thoughtfully. “I’d like that very much.”

Eventually, boards assembled and plates cleared, Eliza returned to her hotel, and Maggie shepherded Val off to her apartment. “See you tonight, babe?” she asked over her shoulder on her way out the door.

“Yeah. I just have to clean up a little bit, water the plants.”

The door closed behind them, and Alex slumped over the countertop with a groan.

“You okay?” Lena asked tentatively.

“Was that wildly awkward or was that just me?”

“You know who you’re asking, right? My metric for awkward family interactions is broken beyond repair.”

Alex groaned again and peeled herself upright. “Maggie’s aunt. I don’t think she likes me.”

“Why not?”

“All that stuff, ‘Maggie’s not the type to settle down,’ what was that about?”

Lena started drying dishes, putting them away, and kept her head down. “I mean, you know her dating history better than I do. Is she?”

There was a moment of silence, and then a screeching stool as Alex got up from the island. “I can’t think about this or my brain will explode.”

“I know the feeling,” Lena murmured, closing the cupboard doors. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you did anything to make her dislike you tonight.”

“So I did something to make her dislike me _before_ tonight?”

Lena grabbed Alex’s glass out of the drainer, refilled it, and shoved it into her hands. “Stop catastrophizing. It went fine.”

“What do _you_ know?” Alex mumbled, taking a deep swallow. “Ugh. This just all has me on edge. I feel like everything I do is a mistake.”

“Including…?”

“What? No!” Hackles raised, Alex set her glass down and stared at Lena. “Why would you ask that?”

“It’s included in everything.” Lena held up her hands in surrender, then went back to drying off the wineglasses. “In our lives, everything is crazy, and complicated. And it’s hard to know who and what you can trust—including your own instincts, sometimes. As long as you’re sure, though, that this is what and who you want, the rest of it shouldn’t matter.”

Alex sighed, sitting back down. “So it’s normal to have… I don’t know, doubts?”

Lena shrugged.

“Do you ever have doubts?” There was a moment of nothing, and then Alex clarified, like salt in a wound. “About Kara?”

Lena opened the cabinet and stretched up to put the glasses away. Once she was done with that, she turned around and said, “I’ve never doubted how Kara feels about me.”

And that answer was somehow good enough.

 

☆

 

For no real reason, Lena had slept at Kara’s apartment. Maybe so someone could let Eliza and Alex back in in the morning—except Alex had stayed over, crashing on the couch, plus Eliza had her own key and there was a hidden backup under the mat. Maybe so someone could bring in the flower arrangements—the white roses and lily-of-the-valley were nice, as was the white ranunculus, but the baby’s breath felt like filler and the hydrangeas were just an odd choice, especially blue and white—or the party foods.

Maybe to see if she felt more or less on edge, more or less at home, without her there—results inconclusive; it felt lonelier to be in Kara’s apartment by herself than it did at her own place.

Either way, none of it mattered, because Lena was on her way out when the flowers came, long before Eliza and Alex were due to return, because of a supposed work emergency. She ended up driving all the way out to the suburbs just to find out what was up.

Sam opened the front door for her, still in her pajamas, a worried look on her face. “I get L Corp calls on my phone,” she blurted in lieu of a greeting.

“Okay.”

“I mean, I had it so that all calls directed to your office line would also be sent to my phone—that way scheduling is easier, you don’t have to loop me in on stuff, it’s a more streamlined, time-efficient chain of communication.”

“That makes sense.” Lena watched Sam pace, hovering in the doorway. “What’s the problem?”

“I got a call from Stryker Island.” Sam came to a halt, hands folded together, right in front of Lena. Her gaze flicked upstairs, briefly, before resuming eye contact. “And Ruby picked up.”

“Oh, my god.”

“She didn’t talk to anyone, it was a call collect robot prelude or something and I hung up right away, but…”

“If I’ve gotten one, there’s no way I haven’t gotten others.”

“I emailed, uh, Jess? Apparently you’ve been getting them for a while, and she always used to immediately block them, but now that she’s out of the office, I guess they’re coming through.”

“Oh, god.”

“Not so much a work emergency as a…” Sam cringed. “Family emergency.”

Lena was torn between trying to fix things right away, calling Stryker and reminding them that Lex wasn’t supposed to have phone access or even driving cross-country to talk to the warden in person—flying, even; this situation certainly merited getting over her silly little phobia—and her promise to Alex, to _Kara,_ to help out with the shower.

And Alex would definitely enable her ridiculous mission to be her brother’s keeper, because it would get her out of the shower.

Which meant Lena had to stay.

_Shit._

“Sam,” Lena said, “it’s fine. I’ll talk to some people about getting my number changed and blocking Stryker’s from the L Corp directory, and I’ll make some calls to get this ironed out on their end, too, on my way back into the city. It’s—it’s not a big deal.”

“God, and I called you on the weekend,” Sam sighed. “I’m so sorry.”

“No need to apologize, you did what you thought was right. And if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have known to handle it.” Lena reached over and gave Sam’s shoulder a squeeze. “But I’m going to handle it. Thank you for letting me know.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Now, I’m going to go to a bridal shower, and you are going to go check in with your daughter, who is very clearly where your mind is at right now. There’s nothing wrong, okay?”

Sam nodded. “Tell the happy couple… whatever you tell happy couples for me.”

“Will do.”

Lena was halfway out the door, and Sam was halfway up the stairs, when she sprinted back down, calling, “Wait, wait!”

Turning, Lena watched Sam skid across the kitchen in sock feet, coming to a stop just in front of a well-organized, if under-stocked, wine rack.

After a moment, she selected a bottle, then passed it over. “Here. My apology to them for pulling you away in their hour of need.”

“Barbaresco. Nice.” Lena tucked it into her bag, careful of her tablet so neither would crack the other, and shot Sam a smile. “I’m sorry, too, for dragging you away from your daughter, _and_ ruining your weekend.”

“Not much planned to ruin, don’t worry. Although I’m probably going to have a lot of explaining to do.” Sam sighed. “A lot _more_ explaining.”

“Good age, though. All those questions mean she’s learning, growing.” Lena shrugged. “That’s a good thing, right?”

“Yeah. I hope so.”

 

☆

 

By the time Lena got back to Kara’s loft, the shower was in full swing. There were way more people there than she actually recognized, so she just sort of coasted around the corners, making herself as invisible as possible and hiding Sam’s gift with the rest of Alex’s reserves. It had been ten minutes before she even laid eyes on a familiar face.

 _“Lucy,_ thank god.”

“Nice to see you, too.” Lucy laughed, not unkindly, and pointed an empty beer bottle towards the mob. “Did you think Alex knew this many people?”

“Maybe they’re Maggie’s friends.”

“Kind of weird, though, that we haven’t met them before now, right?”

Lena shrugged, considering. She didn’t exactly have the background to judge that, considering just how necessary compartmentalization had been to the past twenty-one years of her life, but it sounded like a solid theory.

“What are we talking about?” Susan asked, appearing with two new beers at Lucy’s side and planting a kiss on the corner of her mouth. “All these random strangers Alex has never met before attending her bridal shower?”

“Apparently so.” Lena frowned, peering through the crowd to try and locate Alex. “Do we need to kidnap her or something?”

Lucy hummed thoughtfully, a finger on her cheek.

“Set off the fire alarm, open the window…” Susan squinted, calculating. “We could get a D.E.O. ‘copter outside within ten minutes.”

“I could have the L Corp helicopter outside in five.”

“Braggart.”

Above the din, Eliza called, “Everybody! Everybody, it’s trivia time—and Maggie, _you_ are in the hot seat.”

“Oh, thank god,” Alex gasped, retreating from the throng and, eventually, finding her way over to the biggest clot of people she recognized. “Who _are_ these people?”

Dryly, Lucy asked, “You mean you didn’t invite them?” while popping the lid off her beer.

As Maggie rattled off answers to softball warmup questions like favorite color and favorite animal, Alex watched from the sidelines, fidgeting with her engagement ring.

“Alex’s favorite flavor of ice cream?”

“Rocky road. Come on, man, is that the best you got?”

“This is fun, right?” Alex asked suddenly. “You guys are having fun? This isn’t totally weird and horrible?”

Susan shot a grimace at Lucy, who sacrificed her beer to their hostess; Lena stared at her shoes.

“It’s better than the work emergency I just had to deal with,” she offered.

“Oh, yeah?”

Alex gulped down maybe half her bottle and then said, “Lena, please, I’m begging you, fill me in on your corporate espionage weirdness.”

“No espionage. As far as I know.” Lena risked interaction and grabbed for the nearest sealed drink, just so she could occupy her self by peeling off the label. “I’m getting calls from prison, though, which is fun.”

“Yikes.” Alex clinked their bottles together and took a sip. “What did you go hide in Kara’s room?”

“Sam, my CFO, felt bad about pulling me away from the party, so you have more reinforcements waiting under Kara’s cardigans.”

“You mean I could be drinking something other than this watered-down day drinker crap?”

As Alex snuck off to get a sneaky refill, Lucy hissed, “Alex, we _are_ day drinking!”

She returned, emptied beer bottle now suspiciously full, and said, “Well, _now_ we are.”

As the party wore on, and games were played and gifts were opened, things went surprisingly well, even as the already ridiculous crowd got more ridiculous with drinks and time. Soon enough, even Alex and Lucy were wobbly on their feet, and Lena had long since given up on her heels and stolen a pair of Kara’s flats.

“Hey, Vasquez,” she mumbled, chin in her hands.

Susan blinked, eyes slow to focus. “Yep.”

“How long’ve you and Lucy been, y’know… _a thing?”_

“A thing?” Lucy snickered. “What are we, twelve?”

“Like, going on two years.” Susan draped an arm over Lucy’s shoulders and tugged her down to lean on her side. “Goin’ strong!”

Lucy giggled, thudding her temple against the top of Susan’s head and pointing at Alex. “Y’know what’s funny? We’ve been together longer, but Maggie ’n’ you are moving faster.”

“Ha ha,” Alex said, looking a little like a deer in headlights. “I’m gonna go find Winn and James, because they’re not going to make fun of me.”

“Gonna be a boring conversation,” Lucy lilted. “Pretty sure James had to carry Winn home, like, an hour ago.”

Alex scowled. “Lightweight.”

 

☆

 

Finally, the party died out, and the guests left, long after dark. Maggie had to take Val back to her hotel so she could catch her redeye out of the National City airport; Eliza was running the gifts back to Alex and Maggie’s apartment; even Susan and Lucy were gone, leaving the cleanup mostly to Alex. They had bagged up and dragged out the recycling, though, which was nice of them.

Still, once again, it was Alex and Lena alone, doing cleanup. Or, rather, Lena looking for something to clean up while Alex ate her way through Kara’s hidden pint of rocky road with Sam’s gift open on the counter next to her. “Your friend,” she hummed, “has good taste.”

“I don’t know if we are friends,” Lena frowned, poking at a balloon. “Are these recyclable?”

“Leave my balloons _alone._ ” Alex leaned on her elbows and looked at Lena down the length of her spoon. “What do you mean, you’re not friends?”

“I didn’t say we’re not, I said I don’t know if we are.” Lena abandoned the balloons and started bagging up dirty monogrammed napkins. “I mean, I would like to be friends. I think. She’s nice and she’s capable and she stopped Rhea from—”

“Yeah.”

“But she’s also my employee, which is weird, probably. And I don’t know if she’d want to be friends with me.”

“I mean, she did give you this kickass wine.”

“She gave _you_ that kickass wine,” Lena corrected.

“Okay.” Alex shrugged, grinning over the rim of her glass. “I guess _I_ have a new best friend, then.”

“Kara’s not going to be happy to hear that.”

“Kara’s a big girl, she can handle it.” Alex took another bite of ice cream, then slapped the lid back on and shoved it in the freezer. “Ugh. That’s a deadly combination. I wanna invite her to game night or something, put her on snack duty.”

“Find a pretext for inviting her and a babysitter, you might just swing it.”

Alex sighed, slumping against the fridge. “How, uh, how old? Is her daughter?”

“Twelve, I think. Next year she’s going into eighth grade; part of my pitch for Sam was this really good prep school in district, for when Ruby has to start thinking about college.”

Alex sighed again.

“Are you going all baby fever on me?” Lena asked, shoving another fistful of napkins into a bag. “Not to sound like a Catholic grandmother, but shouldn’t you wait until you’re married to start thinking about kids?”

“Maggie never wants to think about kids.”

“Wait, what?”

“Never mind.” Alex stood upright again, about-faced, and opened the ice cream once more. “We need to start scheming on how to bring your fun employee with good taste in drinks into the group. If we work fast, I might have more than six people sitting on my side of the aisle at the ceremony.”

“Like eight?”

“That is more than six, yes. Come, destroy this ice cream with me.”

Lena, having finally cleared the coffee table, tied up the trash bag and dropped it by the door, then patted the couch cushion with a mock-beleaguered sigh. “I’m not sitting on those stools again for a decade, Danvers, it’s couch or nothing.”

“Ooh, couch. You _are_ a genius.”

Alex, wine, pint, and two spoons in tow, shuffled over and flopped down. There was, somehow, enough left in the bottle to slosh out of the mouth on impact, and enough ambient bad luck that it spilled on Lena’s skirt.

“Damnit. Let me get a napkin or something.” Alex wobbled off the couch. “We have, like, a million of them left over, I swear to god, Mom thinks I can’t do anything without making a mess.”

“It’s fine,” Lena said, waving her off. “It’s only a little spill; at least it didn’t get on the upholstery.”

Damp napkin in hand, Alex returned to the couch. “Do you want to, or am I gonna tell my sister once she gets back from Mars that I felt up her girlfriend?”

Lena laughed. “No offense, but ew. Give me that.”

Alex ceded the napkin, and Lena did her best with the stain, which decidedly was not fading. “I’m sorry. I’ll spot you on dry-cleaning or whatever.”

“No need, Alex.”

“Hmph.” Alex glared at Lena, arms crossed. “You need to let people apologize.”

“I suppose it’s a learned skill I haven’t quite mastered yet.”

“People should say sorry more to you.” Alex paused for a moment, saying nothing, watching Lena fuss futilely at the spot over her thigh. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, really.”

“No, Lena—” Alex groaned, grabbing her wrist. “I’m, like, actually sorry.”

“It’s barely even visible, I’m serious—”

 _“No,_ I’m sorry for _lying_ to you. _About_ you.” Alex wrinkled her nose. “I should’ve told you soon as I knew what you were, but I didn’t, because I didn’t want to mess you and Kara up, because she likes you _so much,_ and you like her _so much_ —liked her so much?”

“I still like Kara, Alex. Love her, actually.”

“Yeah, except things are all weird now, and it’s because I lied. I just didn’t know how things would work out, y’know? I thought it would ruin things because I didn’t know how either of you would react, ‘specially since you knew how she felt about… _you know,_ and I thought you might run off because you’d think she wouldn’t any more. Like you. If she found out. And I thought everything would be okay if nobody new anything.”

Lena said nothing, but she was white-knuckling the damp napkin in her hands like her life depended on it. Which was worse, rehashing the most painful parts of her past year with someone probably too drunk to remember it in the morning, or listening to the wrong person apologize for the role she’d played?

“But it _wasn’t_ okay,” Alex slurred plaintively, “because talking is _always_ better, and people should decide about what makes them happy and they should know things about themselves and have time to process it.”

It became apparent, after a long stretch of silence, that Alex was now finished and waiting for a response. “That’s… very thorough of you,” Lena finally said, “and I. Um. I appreciate the apology?”

“Oh, good,” Alex said, slumping over the back of the couch. “I’m glad.”

“Me, too,” said Lena softly, grabbing for the wine bottle and taking a swig.

“That’s why I didn’t go home last night,” Alex said. “So me and Maggie could have time to process and think about what makes us happy.”

“Oh.” Lena set the bottle down. _“Oh.”_

“But shhhh. We didn’t decide anything yet.” Alex mushed a finger against her own lips in a mangled attempt at a silencing gesture, but she kept missing the mark, and her eyelids looked like they were losing the fight with gravity. “Don’t tell Mom, she likes me doing something normal for once.”

“I won’t,” Lena said, and watched Alex breathe evenly for a solid minute before realizing she’d fallen asleep. “Lightweight.”

She tossed the afghan over her, then got off the couch and put the ice cream away before it totally melted. She put on her shoes, grabbed her bag and the trash by the door, and headed out.

She walked a good five blocks before giving up and calling her driver, and as she waited on the corner, she heard a telltale whoosh overhead.

Less than a minute later, Kara texted: **i take it things went okay?**

Lena replied **everything was perfect.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun stuff!!!  
> \- the flowers lena brought over for dinner meant happy marriage (peonies), peace (delphinium), and return to happiness (lily-of-the-valley)  
> -the flowers from the bridal shower are actually the ones used on the show, and are absolutely ridiculous choices for a bridal shower: blue hydrangeas (frigidity/apology), white/green hydrangeas (bragging), white roses (traditional wedding flower), white ranunculus (i am overpowered by your charm), and maybe lily-of-the-valley (return to happiness) and baby’s breath (reconnection)  
> -the wine Sam gave as an apology is one that pairs well with rocky road ice cream, which is (apparently) Alex's favorite; Google says the Merlot that Maggie loves would pair better with a brownie 
> 
> All that to say, I hope you enjoyed this chaptersode! it's shorter than last week's but it's still a decent length, and I feel like it got done what I needed it to get done, so i'm satisfied, and i hope you are, too!


	4. S3write Ep04: The Faithful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A familiar crash-landing leads Kara to powerful evidence for an ongoing investigation, and puts her in danger; Sam, Lena, and Alex make new friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for those of you who are in the discord, you know my thesis: no more straight white men! as such, coville can kiss it, he's not invited to this story  
> also for those of you in the discord, you probably saw this coming, because you were there for the poll! maybe three people also saw it on tumblr back in july, but i sincerely doubt anybody clicked through and read this or even remembers it. 
> 
> note: there is talk of shitty dudes in the workplace, in case that is a specific issue for anybody reading, particularly a shitty dude lawyer ignoring a woman in charge and talking to her male assistant bc he assumes a man has to be in charge, a shitty dude politician taking a business dinner to flash a woman as a sexual proposition, a shitty dude coworker taking credit for a woman's work, and a shitty dude professor being weird and old man flirty with a college student, all in past mention. if any of these are an issue, skip from "workplace horror stories" to "Who wants to flash Supergirl's girlfriend?" and you should land squarely in the midst of weird gay emotional crises that have absolutely nothing to do with men being shitty!

Never has Lena been so thankful for an alien invasion. Despite all the horrors of last May, if not for the catalyst of the invasion, she never would have known about Samantha Arias, never would have felt indebted enough to offer her a promotion, and never would have had the chance to spend a few more working hours per week thinking about the R&D side of things.

Like, right now, instead of dealing with Paul the sleezebag lawyer from JQB as he tries to renege on the details of a merger they’ve been hammering out for months, Lena could focus on the far more engaging and peaceful concept of sigma-bonded synthetic neurons for prosthetics and brain trauma recovery tech.

She definitely felt bad about sort of abandoning Sam to handle it, but her phone was on, and she’s at her desk, so push come to shove, she’d be there. But so far, she’s had a nice, uninterrupted morning of applying quantum entanglement principles to theoretical bioengineering, with absolutely no intrusions from her professional or personal life.

 _Thank fuck for that,_ she thought, setting her tablet down briefly to take a sip of her coffee. She closed her eyes and let out a sigh.

And then her phone rang.

“Hector?”

“Agent Danvers is on line one. And in the elevator.”

“Let her in when she gets here.”

The door to her office swung open, and in walked Alex, in all her fake FBI glory. “Hey,” she said, hanging up and shoving her phone into her pocket, “wanna come see a UFO crash site?”

“What?”

“An unidentified, unmanned, extraterrestrial craft breached atmo about five minutes ago, and it’s gonna land somewhere in the middle of the desert. If we start driving now, we can be there with the recovery team when it hits.”

Random pod crashes were definitely more fun than waiting on mergers, and Lena could always multitask on the ride out. “I just have to sign some papers and we can hit the road.”

“Okay, where are these papers?”

“With Sam.”

Alex’s eyes widened, and she briefly looked as if she’d been punched in the throat.

“Don’t worry, she’s on her way, she’ll be here any minute.” Lena saved her spec sketch, grinning. “And, hey! This is the perfect opportunity to press her into service as your new best friend!”

“I’m going to kill you,” Alex groaned, hiding her eyes behind her hand. “Drunk Alex is off the record! I made Kara promise!”

“But I’m not Kara, and I made no such promises.”

Alex, in retaliation, stole the rest of Lena’s coffee, holding it just out of reach as she kept one eye on the door.

It had been no more than two minutes’ wait before Sam walked in, already apologizing—she almost had Lena beat for the compulsive contrition record. “Ruby had a soccer game, and then the kids wanted to get ice cream to celebrate—”

“No worries,” Lena said. “This is my friend, Alex, who had the shower last weekend.”

“Oh!” Sam looked at Alex over her shoulder, pausing from rooting around inside her bag for the paperwork only briefly. Then she went back to her search before straightening up and looking at Alex again, tucking her hair behind her ears. “It’s nice to see you again. You were at the wharf, and downtown last week.”

Alex beamed, extended a hand. “Nice to see you, too. You have dangerous taste in drinks, Ms. Arias.”

“Please—” and she took Alex’s hand, shook it “—call me Sam.”

“Sam.” Alex’s cheeks looked a little pink. “Nice to see you again, Sam.”

“I think you already said that,” Lena whispered out of the corner of her mouth.

“Shut up,” Alex hissed back, finally remembering to drop Sam’s hand.

Sam ducked back down again, finally retrieving the file, and handed it to Lena. “The JQB merger should be finalized any minute, unless Paul tries to pull something, which I will not allow.”

Lena laughed, and leaned against her desk to sign off. She and Sam talked shop for a moment, Alex hovering in the periphery, shifting her weight almost nervously, and it couldn’t be desire to head off to the crash site, because she hadn’t been particularly fussed about timing before.

_Oh. Invite._

“So, Sam, how do you plan on celebrating your first big merger as CFO?” Lena asked, jabbing the toe of her stiletto into Alex’s shin.

Sam glanced up at Lena, who did not flinch when Alex jabbed her right back with the thick rubber sole of her tac boots.

“We’re having a girls night at my sister’s place tonight,” Alex blurted, “if, uh, if you wanted to come.”

“No, I couldn’t intrude,” Sam said, leaning forward on her elbows even as she emphatically waved the offer aside.

“If you say no, Alex will probably just kidnap you,” Lena hummed, looking at her signing hand with deliberate nonchalance. “She’s very determined about these things.”

“Lena,” Alex said, eyes wide, “shut up. Sam, I promise, I am not a kidnapper.”

Sam laughed, bright and warm, eyes crinkling.

“No, she’s not, but really, it’s not an intrusion if you’re invited.” Lena finished her last signature and set the pen down. “So, if that’s your only objection, we’ll see you there.”

“Okay! Alright, I’ll go.” Sam tucked the papers away to be filed and looked over at Alex. “What should I bring?”

“Drinks, definitely. My sister has the taste of a frat boy when it comes to party fare.” 

“Is it a party?” Sam asked, tilting her head.

Alex swallowed, and started fumbling for an answer.

“It is not a party, don’t worry. And please don’t bring tequila.”

“I won’t.” Sam grinned, saluting with three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“Were you a girl scout?” Alex asked, tucking her hands into her back pockets and rocking forward on the balls of her feet.

“No, but Ruby was, briefly.”

“Oh, wow, how was—”

“Alex? How long is the drive?”

Alex waved her off absently. “It’s fine, we’re taking my bike.”

Sam rested her chin on her knuckles. “You have a motorcycle?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s a lot safer than you’d think—”

“Okay. Sam, we’ll see you later, but Alex actually came over to ask me to weigh in on something at her office, so we have to go.”

“Oh! I won’t hold you up any longer.” Sam lifted her head abruptly from her hand, smile shifting. “See you tonight.”

“See you tonight!” Alex called over her shoulder as Lena shoved her out the door.

Once they were in the elevator, Lena looked at her and shook her head.

“What?” Alex said, a little defensive, cheeks still pink.

“I didn’t say anything.”

_“What?”_

 

☆

 

Somehow, they still made it to the site in time to see the pod hit. There was a great plume of sand that rose up from the impact, obscuring the D.E.O. vehicles approaching from the other side, and a sound like glass cracking.

“That’s one hell of a landing,” Alex said over the sound of the engine, pulling up short. “Come on, we can walk from here. I don’t want to get any falling sand in my engine.”

Lena took off her heels and stowed them in one of Alex’s saddlebags, then followed her towards the crater.

It was only about ten minutes’ walking, and the recovery team had only just set up a perimeter. There were even a few spare pairs of boots lying around in case of contamination, so Lena haz-mat suited up in flat, sand-free shoes after handing over all her personal items, including her super signal watch, and got a closer look.

The pod was tall, about six feet, and made of a dark, shiny, metallic material, etched with deep grooves that hadn’t been damaged at all by the landing or trans-atmospheric descent. One of the other agents was waving a scanner over it, nose to tail, and called, “Radiation levels safe!”

Lena took off her gloves and jumped down into the crater.

“What do we know about it?” Alex asked, hopping down beside her.

“Not from this galaxy, that’s for sure. We think the markings are some kind of language, but we can’t figure out which one.”

“Definitely familiar, though,” Lena murmured, leaning closer. “Do you know what kind of radiation it’s letting off?”

“It’s got trace amounts of all kinds of radiation, probably collected while drifting through space, but it’s emitting low frequency beta rays. We think it might be a power source inside the ship; tank of gas getting low after a long trip.”

Alex frowned, running a latex-gloved hand over the grooves. “How long a trip? Do we have any idea what the point of origin was?”

“Not so far, but based on the amount and variety of background radiation it’s picked up, this thing’s traveled about two thousand light years to find us.”

Lena started running through her mental list of habitable planets at that radius; they probably have their analysts on it, going through the actual official database, but she can’t help it. Her brain is dragged around by twin instincts: to be curious, and to be helpful.

“Is there any way to open it?” Alex asked, still feeling the ship up—looking for some kind of entry catch. “There’s got to be some way to open it.”

“We can try back at the D.E.O.,” the recovery agent said. “We just need to get the pod out of the crater and onto a truck.”

“And the glass,” Lena said quietly. “Any particulate matter on the hull might have transferred on impact, gotten trapped. You’ll need to analyze that, too, just in case. And there’s the risk of some hyper-resilient bacteria spawning in the desert, and then suddenly there’s an intergalactic epidemic spawning and infecting the coyote population.”

“Coyote zombies from outer space?” Alex pushes off her knees, standing upright. “I think I saw that movie once.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I think I made Kara watch it with me, actually. Gave her nightmares for weeks.”

That definitely sounded like Kara. Lena shot Alex a glare, only half-playing, then knelt down on the glass and took off her gloves. “I’ll scrub my hands in the decontamination shower later,” she promised, and put her hands on what of the cone still protruded above the burnt-out sand. “But usually, tech with that kind of marking on the exterior has an interface that wakes up with…”

She made it halfway up—or down—the pod’s body when the blue holographic interface woke up, familiar words fluttering across the interface.

“Touch.”

“That’s Kryptonese. Holy shit.”

“Uh-huh.” Lena tilted her head sideways, trying to read upside down. “And if I do this—”

The pod opened, and out spilled maybe half a dozen information crystals, deep blue and glistening. Lena grabbed for the first one, which, like the pod, woke up to her touch, blasting out paragraph after paragraph of what seemed to be Kryptonian historical texts, too fast for her to read, especially when her brain kept trying to spit out the best plan to get in touch with Kara without getting locked up for treason or whatever bullshit excuse they might throw at her. Finally, the words stopped scrolling, and Lena caught the last sentence. _“Nonehd nahv byth._ Third of ten.”

“But there are only six crystals in here.”

“Which means at least one other pod is landing.” Lena set the crystal down and moved back to the interface, looking for a data log, navigation, anything from the launch that might tell her when the rest would arrive. If it was anything like Kara and Kal-El’s linked pods, it might be decades until the last of these crystals arrived.

Lena kept searching and translating in her head while recovery agents moved around her, bagging up crystals, attaching a crane harness to the bottom of the pod. She worked with her shoulders hunched protectively around the display, even though she was the only one present who could fluently read Kryptonese; part of her wondered if chain of command should be broken, and she should call Kara, who by all rights deserved to get first crack at this.

“I wish Supergirl was here,” Alex muttered, once they were alone in the pit. “She needs to see this.”

Lena relaxed, just a little, after hearing her say that. It was nice to hear that lying and secret-keeping weren’t the default by choice. “Once this gets back to the D.E.O., we should put it in the same room as her hologram. Keep it quiet. Private.”

Alex clenched her jaw and nodded, just the once, then offered Lena her hand. “C’mon, Legs. Let’s get out of this hole and back to work.”

“Speaking of work, I completely abandoned my CFO for…” Lena glanced up as Alex pulled her to her feet. “Six hours. She’s going to hate me.”

“Well, you better apologize. I will not have my invitation rejected.” Alex pulled herself out of the crater, brushing sand off her pants as she watched Lena do the same. “I have very strong feelings about rejection. Have you been working out?”

“Just because I don’t have… _super strength_ any more, doesn’t mean I have to be weak.” Lena wrinkled her nose; there was definitely a sunburn happening on her face and hands. Damnit. “And speaking of Sam, what was up with you? It was like you forgot how words worked.”

“I don’t have a lot of friends. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

“So, what, you turn into a monosyllabic tomato around all your friends?”

“Shut up!”

“I’m just saying, should I feel special that you remain perfectly capable of speech around me?” Lena gave a dramatic gasp. “Are _we_ new best friends?”

“Oh, my god, you’re the worst. I’m making Kara give you drink tickets for tonight, cutting you off at one and a half.”

“You’re a monster.”

Alex stripped off her haz-mat suit and shook sand out of her hair from under the shadow of one of the tents set up, watching as the recovery team hauled the pod and the impact glass out of the pit. “Little bit,” she said, squinting into the glare.

Lena, true to her word, scrubbed her hands down in the tent before changing back into her regular clothes. As soon as she had her phone and watch back, she made a big show of dialing Sam to apologize for leaving her in the lurch all afternoon while walking back towards the bike; but once she was out of earshot or view, she called Kara.

Who didn’t pick up.

So Lena checked her service—stellar—and dialed again.

Straight to voicemail.

_Fuck._

“Hey, it’s me. I, uh. I don’t know why your phone is off, or maybe you’re ignoring me, which is. It’s fine. We’re both busy people, you’re probably finishing an article or something. But I was with your sister today, consulting, and we found something that, uh… How do I say this? Something that’ll make you a little homesick. _Iadh vot byth fardhogho_.” Lena let out a breath, ran her fingers through her sandy updo. “We’ll be at her office for a while, until it’s time to go to yours for girls’ night. She figured out how to invite Sam, who’s bringing drinks, so don’t worry about that. I hope everything’s okay. I hope you’re okay. Um. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

She hung up and shoved her feet back into her heels, which were somehow full of sand, so she took them off and tried to shake the sand out. It was still there when Alex walked back over, just in time to see Lena hurl them off into the dunes, never to be seen again.

“You wanna go get those?” Alex asked, leaning against the handlebars.

“No.” Lena inhaled, wrapping her hands around the back of her neck and leaning onto her knees. “Kara didn’t pick up. Should I be worried?”

Alex got on, revved the engine. “No.” She looked back, brow furrowed, mouth twisted. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“That doesn’t help,” Lena shouted over the roar, grabbing onto Alex.

“I always worry about her.”

“Me, too.”

☆

 

Kara actually got let into her own apartment by her sister, whose ears were a little pink. “Ooh, did you go visit Lucy today? That’s not fair, I haven’t seen her in forever and you see her twice in one week!”

“We didn’t see Lucy,” Alex said, pulling Kara into what could’ve been a bone-crushing hug under a different sun. “Didn’t you get Lena’s voicemail?”

“No, I was talking to sources about Edge all day, I had my phone on airplane mode to save battery for recording.” Kara pulled out of the hug, already scanning the apartment. “Where’s Lena? Is she okay?”

“She’s fine!” Lena called, coming out of the bathroom with an oddly shiny and flushed face. “She’s sunburnt and hating life, but she’s fine. _You_ do not have enough aloe vera in your medicine cabinet.”

“That’s because I don’t need it.” Kara frowned, flitting over, taking Lena’s face into her hands. “Your poor face. Do you want freeze breath?”

“Uh.” Lena’s heart sounded like a machine gun. “Alex says you have an ice pack eye mask?”

“For migraines, yeah, overstimulation headaches.”

“Head’s up!” Alex opened the freezer, retrieved it, and chucked it at Lena.

Without turning, Kara snatched it out of midair, Lena’s hand coming up to snag the other end just a split second later. Kara handed it over immediately, and let go of Lena’s face, hearing her heart immediately slow down.

_Oh, jeez._

“So, what’s the big situation?” Kara flopped down on the couch, deliberately casual, giving Lena space to move towards her or away. “And why were you both out in the desert?”

“There was a pod crash,” Alex said slowly, closing the freezer. “And I asked Lena to help with extraction.”

“Oh. Okay. What did you find?”

Lena pressed the mask onto her face, sitting down on the floor next to the couch so she didn’t have to look at Kara.

“It was—Lena, you tell her, you translated it.”

And suddenly Lena’s heart was pounding again.

“Lena? What’s wrong?”

“We found a probe, full of these crystals that project holograms when you touch them. Information.” The pounding got even faster. “Kryptonian history, science, maps.”

“And you tried to tell me, and I missed it.” Kara covered her mouth with her hand, closed her eyes. “It’s all at the D.E.O.?”

“Yes,” Alex breathed, sitting down next to her. “We put it in the room with your mom; we’re the only people who know where it is, and other than the team who closed off the area and cleaned up, we’re the only people who know it’s here. It was Lena’s idea.”

“Thank you,” Kara said softly, shifting onto her knees as she reached down to briefly, lightly, touch Lena’s hand with her fingertips in gratitude. “I—how long, until everyone gets here? Do I have time to go over?”

“Maybe, if you hurry.” Alex gave her other hand a squeeze. “Maggie said she’d be here around seven thirty, and I think we told Sam eight.”

“And it’s seven twenty now, crap.”

“You can be a little late,” Lena said, twisting around and lifting the mask off of one cheek. “Nobody will mind. Maggie will understand, and Sam—we can tell her you went and got ice, or something. Your boss made you work overtime; you two can commiserate.”

Kara smiled, ducked to kiss the top of Lena’s head and then stretched to do the same to Alex, whose eyebrows flew skyward, and then launched herself off the back of the couch and out the window, leaving her clothes fluttering down towards the carpet.

“Oh, my god,” Alex hollered after her, “please come back wearing clothes!”

In twelve minutes, Maggie was at the door with a disgusting burden of takeout bags, insisting that she would’ve been on time if she hadn’t run into and been recognized by the delivery guy downstairs; twelve minutes after that, Sam had arrived early, with drinks, as promised.

“You were downtown the other week, too,” Sam marveled, setting a bottle of whiskey down on the countertop. “Lena, do you just exclusively hang out with disaster chasers?”

“Well, how else would I get anyone to spend time with me?” Lena joked. “I’m a disaster magnet.”

“Isn’t that just part of the territory,” Sam said, looking at her over her shoulder, “y’know, with the, um…”

Alex leapt up from the couch and started helping Sam unbag everything. “So! Red, white, whiskey, or vodka?”

“You said your sister had frat boy taste in snacks, so I tried to provide accordingly—sans tequila. You’re welcome.”

Sam and Alex tended bar while Maggie laid out dinner. “Sorry,” she said, glancing up at Sam as she unpacked box after box of Chinese food, “I didn’t know we were having a fifth.”

“Don’t worry,” Sam said, waving her off, “I ate dinner with my daughter before I came. I heard snacks so I figured I had a chance to make her eat one more meal with me this week that wasn’t at the office.”

Maggie managed a smile that was only a little stiff; Alex only spilled a little cab sauv on the countertop. It was fine.

“What’s that like?” Alex asked abruptly as she tossed a soggy paper towel in the trash. “Raising a daughter by yourself, I mean, how do you do that?”

“Uh, not very gracefully,” Sam admitted, swirling her glass. “I’m always behind on something. You guys will see, when you have kids.”

“Well, actually, we’re not gonna have kids,” Maggie said, looking at Alex over a carton of potstickers. “Right, babe?”

“Right, yeah.” Alex smiled, a staticky flicker of an expression that she couldn’t quite make stick, and wiped her hands on her jeans. “But, y’know, you ever need a babysitter…”

“Oh, please.” Sam knocked her hip into Alex’s. “You’re the FBI agent who knows as much about geology as she does and hangs out with superheroes all day. Ruby would probably pay you herself if she could, and that’s saying something. She’s at that age where she insists she doesn’t need a babysitter, but she also consistently sets microwaves on fire making herself hot chocolate.”

“I once tried to build a particle collider out of a microwave,” Lena offered. “It would’ve worked, too, but I got caught in the kitchen.”

“You didn’t grab and run?” Alex scoffed. “You would make a _terrible_ criminal.”

“You’re one of a select few who thinks so.” Lena tilted her glass, clinking it against Alex’s before draining it.

Finally, when Kara got back, it was around nine. She wasn’t in her suit, and she didn’t look like she’d been in a fight, and there had been no alerts from the D.E.O. about any altercations. There was a look in her eyes, though, distant but hard, full of conviction even as an air of lostness hung around her like a thick fog.

She kicked off her shoes by the door, shed her backup coat and hung it on the coatrack, and immediately descended upon the room temperature potstickers like a plague of locusts. Once she’d filled her face with about half a carton, she seemed to remember her manners and, after swallowing, she said, “Hey. Sorry I’m late, I was working this, uh…”

She trailed off, saying nothing for a good ten seconds before Lena jumped in.

“The Edge story, right?” she asked, giving Kara an out as she crossed to her side, put a hand on her shoulder. It felt good, and bad, and weird, but the barometer settled on good when Kara sort of melted into her palm. “We know, you can’t tell us anything that isn’t in print yet, you don’t have to remind us. Drink?”

“I would kill for a milkshake right now,” Kara sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose from behind her glasses, “but I’ll settle for whatever’s open.”

“See?” Alex said. “The family resemblance is incredible.”

They settled Kara in with a drink and polished off the rest of the takeout, clustered around the coffee table. Alex and Maggie sat together on the couch with a solid cushion between them, Sam in the armchair opposite Alex, Kara closest to the open window, Lena between her and her escape route because she knew all too well that posture, that subtle lean towards the skyline.

Kara hadn’t said it, but her plan was clear: at the first sign of the second pod, she would make her excuses and chase it down, snatch it out of the sky if she could.

Lena wouldn’t stop her—couldn’t, even if she wanted to—but there needed to be a reminder not to just launch herself out, because for the first time in a long time, Kara had someone in her apartment who didn’t know.

Still, things were going well, despite that. The look in Kara’s eyes played convincingly enough as the aftereffects of a harrowing day at work, and what started as an attempt to distract her soon devolved into one-upping each other with workplace horror stories.

“So, this merger,” Sam said, setting down her wine glass and tucking her feet under herself in her chair, “the very first day I was on this, I wasn’t in National City yet. I had an email with all the important phone numbers and Hector’s desk, so he could connect me through an actual L Corp number and it would look official. And I got maybe halfway down the list and then we hit a friggin’ toll booth, so I tell Hector to wait for the next guy—which was Paul, by the way!”

Lena wrinkled her sunburnt nose. “Skeezeball Paul?”

Sam laughed. “Yes! He picked up, and I’m like, _holy shit_ , I’m juggling a steering wheel, my wallet, my phone, and Paul says, ‘Hello?’ And I say, ‘Hello, this is Samantha Arias from L Corp,’ and he says, ‘okay, sweetheart, put me through to Sam, this call should’ve started half an hour ago.’”

“Wait, _what?”_

“So, first of all, I was actually calling early because I was working against the time difference, we were back in Iowa, I think. And second of all, I’m the friggin’ CFO!”

“Please,” Kara begged, “tell me you told him off.”

“I mean, I couldn’t go ham on him,” Sam sighed, sinking back in her chair and reclaiming her wine glass. “I had my kid in the car, it was my first day…”

Lena pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles.

“So instead I say, ‘Hector, can you transfer Paul to the person he’s supposed to be speaking to?’ And Hector—I feel so bad, he had no idea what was happening—says, ‘but Ms. Arias, you’re in charge!’”

Alex grinned and leaned across the coffee table to high five her. “Hell yeah!”

Sam slapped her palm, but shook her head. “No, no, it’s not a triumphant tale. Paul hears Hector’s voice and immediately goes, ‘Sam! Buddy, took you long enough! Let’s talk shop.’”

“No fuckin’ way,” Maggie said, shaking her head. “That’s fucking ridiculous.”

“That’s what happened!” Sam shrugged, took a sip. “I mean, I’m sure you have some crazy stories. Aren’t the police a total boys’ club?”

“Oh, you have no idea. There was one time, back in Gotham—”

Sam grimaced.

“Yeah, that face is the right face, Gotham _sucks._ So, back in Gotham. I’m a rookie, fresh out of college and training—top of my class, despite being the shortest one in it, thank you very much—and I get the exact assignment I wanted. Special Crimes, which is Gotham-speak for Science Division, a.k.a. the X files shit. At the time, basically glorified CSI, except you go to scenes with gas masks in case some clown puts mustard gas on a pressure release trigger under a note with a riddle on it, and sometimes all your evidence is contaminated by some dude in leather with a dumb cowl.”

“Batman has bat-baggage,” Kara confirmed. “So much bat-baggage.”

“Anyways, every scene I go to, I get partnered up with this one idiot. Atkins? So, every time I’m at a scene, I’m just doing my job, and he’s fuckin’ useless. I collect all the evidence, I bag it and tag it, I do all the work; we get back to the station, I’m processing, I’m analyzing, I’m doing everything. I’m there for maybe a year, and I get my annual review. Turns out, they think I haven’t done any of the processing, any analysis, any collection—because goddamn Michael fucking Atkins has been putting his name on all my paperwork! Not even copying it and putting new versions in the files, god forbid he do any work; the handwriting doesn’t even match!”

“So, what did you do?”

“I wait another six months, I collect my evidence, I file my paperwork, and then I go right up to the Commissioner at the Policemen’s Ball with an accordion folder full of proof.”

“Did he get fired?”

Maggie waved her hand. “He got transferred to a desk job in Vice. Not really a loss for him, except he didn’t get to take the officer exam for another five years.”

“Did he pass?”

“Pfft! No.”

“One time,” Kara said, “when I was in college, I had this professor. Weird, weird guy. He had this, like, obsession with cuckoo clocks?”

“Kara,” Alex said, eyes wide, “Kara, is this the ornithologist?”

“Yes! Yes, it’s the ornithologist.”

Alex screamed, mouth shut, and chugged the rest of her glass. “Okay, so, backstory. Kara loved birds as a kid. She was, like, an encyclopedia of birds. She had this friend, Kenny, with a telescope, and they used to go bird watching together.”

“Aw,” Sam said, “that’s kind of sweet. Birds scared the shit out of me as a kid; I never knew what to expect from ‘em.”

“So, because of my _completely normal interest in birds,_ I took an ornithology class for my biology credit sophomore year.” Kara shifted down onto the floor, refilling her glass and, without a word said, Lena’s, when she held it out. “And, of course, I love it. It’s so fun, I get to write essays on birds, beak shape evolution, Darwinism, prey behaviors and scavenging—it was my favorite part of that whole semester.”

“It was an eight a.m.,” Alex stage whispered, and everybody wrinkled their noses.

“I’m a morning person!”

“Oh, trust me,” Lena laughed, “we know.”

“Anyways, this professor’s office hours are crazy early. He refuses to stay on campus past noon, he only comes to campus two days a week, and I have a seven a.m. Writing 101 right before because I am a… _creative_ speller.”

“She spelled chicken with a T for years.”

“Alex, I swear, I will call Eliza and tell her you forgot sunscreen.”

Miming zipping her lips, Alex settled back into the arm of the couch, bouncing her eyebrows at Sam and mouthing _t-s-i-_ before Kara caught her.

“So, we have our final paper coming up. I’m writing mine about cuckoos. Cultural significance, phylogeny and evolution, brood parasitism.” Kara gestured with her glass, one finger pointing as the others gripped with careful ease. “Did you know cuckoos are sacred to the Hindu god of romantic love and longing and the Greek goddess of marriage, but symbolize _unrequited_ love in Japanese legends and cuckoldry in European myth?”

“I did not,” Sam said, nodding. “Did you know that cuckoos cheat on their spouses to avoid parental commitments?”

“Yes, I did!” Kara whooped. “So, I’m writing this paper. It is… _stupendous._ It is my magnum opus. It should’ve won a prize!”

“Hell yeah!” Alex cheered, pouring herself a refill. “It was a good fuckin’ paper, I remember ‘cause you read it to me every night for a month because you wanted it to sound right.”

“And it paid off, I thought! I submitted my first draft, and I was like, ‘I know you keep a really precise schedule of office hours, but I’m in classes from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon, and there’s no way I can get out of any of them this late in the semester, and’—he had mandatory review, you had to come to office hours and talk about the critique he gave your paper before you could start your final draft—‘and if I could please meet with you outside of office hours to talk about my paper, I would really appreciate it.’”

“Did he let you?”

“Mm-hm. He invited me to his home office, said he was writing a thesis on flamingos he thought I would like, come over at ten.”

Sam’s eyes widened and she curled back in her chair. “Oh, no.”

“No, no, no! It’s fine, it’s fine. I showed up, with my paper, and we go inside, we go to his office, we talk about his critiques—which are mostly spelling and grammar, which we already knew I was a little rebellious about, so it’s fine—and then he shows me his paper on flamingos, and I don’t really care one way or another about flamingos, but it’s well researched, and I tell him as much, and he… Y’know.” Kara shrugged, laughing. “He puts his hand between my shoulders and says, ‘sweetheart, that’s just what an old man like me wants to hear from a pretty girl like you.’”

Lena wrinkled her nose, resting her head against Kara’s knee. “I _hate_ him.”

“Nothing bad happened. I was just really disappointed.” Kara patted the top of Lena’s head. “When I told Alex, she threatened to drive over and turn him into one of the donated cadavers they were gonna use for _her_ finals in med school.”

“And I would’ve done it, too! The creep had it coming.”

“Speaking of disappointing old men,” Lena said, “do you want to hear about the Baldwin event?”

“The Baldwin event?”

“The Baldwin event!”

“Just tell us about the Baldwin event.”

“So, this public servant who I shall not name, back when I’d just taken over L Corp and was looking for a new hometown, came to court us, try and convince us we should start over there. Very confident, very cocky. And I’m very busy, considering my family is on trial, I’m running a company under investigation by every government body under the sun, so I can’t fit him in during business hours. He says I could probably use a break, considering I’m _so very busy,_ so he invites me to dinner at the Baldwin where he’s staying, right?

“So we get there, and there are paparazzi in the dining room. I nearly up and leave, he says, ‘why don’t we just have them deliver it to my room,’ I check my bag for my taser and say ‘why the hell not?’ It’s not like people won’t see me leave with him if it’s some kind of twisted, terribly-planned, public assassination attempt. We go up, we talk shop a little, he offers me a tax break if I relocate to his city which is the exact opposite of why I was moving, so I’m already planning on letting him down easy, and the food gets here. I go to the door to let the waiter in, and when I turn around… _he’s naked.”_

“What? Ew!”

 _“I_ hate _him,”_ Kara said, wrinkling her nose. “What town was this?”

“Down, girl,” Alex joked. “Lena’s got her trusty taser, right? Please tell me you used it.”

“Oh, no. Tasers are not an effective ranged weapon.” Lena took a sip. “I laughed at him.”

Sam cackled, head thrown back. “You _laughed?”_

“It was funny! I mean, yes, disgusting, both morally and, y’know, visually, but it was also hilarious, and I was so wired and stressed I don’t think I had the energy to freak out. So, I laughed at him, and he got embarrassed and kicked me out, and the next morning I have an NDA and a withdrawal of his proposal on my desk.” Lena shrugged. “Happy ending, anyways, because I also got a letter from the Mayor of National City, we had a very pleasant phone call, and a year later, here I am.”

“I cannot believe you got Naked Manned,” Sam sighed, shaking her head. “How old were you when that episode even aired?”

“I was getting my bachelor’s, so… fifteen? God, that was a really dated reference for him. No wonder he was embarrassed. That was barely over a year ago, and I cannot imagine that happening now.”

“I mean, yeah, of course not. Who wants to flash Supergirl’s girlfriend?”

Lena froze, just a little, and Kara, too, and then, in response, Sam went stiff.

“Whoops. Should I not have..?”

“No, no, it’s fine. People tend to think that.”

“Considering the interview about the registry, the photos at the waterfront…” Maggie shrugged, eyebrows sky-high. “If any kind of closet is involved, it’s glass, is all I’m saying.”

“Supergirl is a hero and a mentor and a—a friend. Taking pictures with puppies together and knowing that xenophobia hurts her as much as anyone else doesn’t make me anything special to her.”

Kara stared down at the bottom of her glass as Lena spoke. Did Lena think that? That she wasn’t special to Kara? Was she saying it because she wanted to protect Kara’s secret identity, or because she wanted to be known as Kara Danvers’ girlfriend, not Supergirl’s? Did she not want to be either of their girlfriend’s?

She was snapped out of her spiral by a hand on her ankle. Lena’s, she realized after a moment. Feather-light, fingers sneaking up the cuff of her trousers, skating the curve of her calf muscle. Reassurance.

 _Oh_.

“She and I are the only two people who know what it’s like to be the way we are,” Lena said, her thumb moving in a slow arc over Kara’s leg, “but that’s basically all we have in common.”

“What, uh, what about you, Kara?” Sam asked, changing the subject as subtly and abruptly as she could. “Are you seeing anybody?”

_Lena’s hand on my leg, Lena avoiding me, all we have in common is knowing what it’s like to be us, I’m her hero, she’s my heart—_

“It’s, uh, complicated,” Kara finally said, gulping. “I’m with someone, but things are kind of a mess right now, and I—if I could make things easy, I would, but I don’t think I can.”

“Loving someone doesn’t mean things are simple,” Sam agreed, “but it’s worth it, isn’t it?”

“Oh.” Kara beamed, cheeks warm. “Absolutely.”

“Is that how it is with, uh, with Ruby’s father?” Alex asked. “Is he still in the picture at all?”

“Nope. It’s just me and Ruby, and I’m thankful for that every day.” Sam ducked her head, smiling a little crookedly, a little shakily. “I would chew off my own hand before I let him have one in raising her.”

“And who needs dads?” Maggie said, raising a glass as if to toast.

Sam nodded. “Damn right!”

They all fell in, clinking their glasses together, and it was over that sound that Kara heard another. A distant whistling pop—atmospheric entry.

“I, uh, I think I should go get some ice.”

“Yes,” Alex said, “you should definitely go do that.”

“Stay safe out there. It’s dark.” Lena gave Kara’s hand a squeeze, subtle and subtly returned, before she pulled away and ducked out the front door, hiding her clothes under the potted plant in the hall and taking off out the window.

 

☆

 

Kara flew, listening for the falling pod, trying to track it. The closer she got, the clearer it became that the pop she’d heard wasn’t an upper-atmo entry; it was close enough to the ground that, if she didn’t hurry, she might miss it.

_Crap._

She closed her eyes and let herself be dragged towards the sound until she could practically taste the ozone in its wake, until her hands were on its hull.

Letting out a whoop, Kara started pulling upwards, pulling the pod out of its descent, but it wasn’t working.

 _Why isn’t it working?_ She thought. _Why do I feel…?_

It was dull, the pain. Muted. Distant. Like a deep, days-old bruise, a sore muscle that only hurt when in use.

Humans put soil samples in the Voyager probe. Maybe Kryptonian scientists did the same.

Through the hull of the ship, Kara was protected enough that she wasn’t dropping out of the sky, but she wasn’t strong enough to keep the pod in the air if she kept in contact with it. If Lena was there, suited up, she could just stretch out a baton to hook it out of the air and maintain a safe distance, and they could fly it back to the D.E.O., no problem, but that wasn’t happening. That couldn’t happen, and that was on Kara, and now she had a choice to make: burn herself out by hugging Kryptonite through a pod too heavy to hold up, or let it hit the ground, call for reinforcements, and get through the night safely.

Because she’d promised, hadn’t she? Lena had asked her to, and Lena asking was as good as Kara saying yes, because Rao knows she couldn’t say no to her if she tried, and—

“Aaah!”

Like holding the handle of a pan on a stovetop, the heat and pain had built slowly, exponentially, until Kara couldn’t keep her grip and the decision was made for her. The pod plummeted towards the earth below, and Kara wobbled in the sky, regaining her strength and focus until she realized where she was.

Over a bridge.

_Crap!_

Kara dove down, tucking her healing hands in at her sides to move more efficiently towards the falling pod. She angled her shoulder into the hull of the ship and drove it off the edge of the bridge, crashing it not into a populated road, but into the tree bank alongside it. The impact dug up a deep furrow, knocked over a few trees, but so far, no casualties.

But there might be. Drivers, toppled trees—evacuate the bridge.

Kara spared one last glance for the pod and, in a cheap effort to hide it, kicked a wave of dirt over it and moved a fallen tree so it gently sprawled across its hull, then took off.

At first, the evacuation was small potatoes—stand at the end, shake your head apologetically, and all the late night commuters sigh, but accept that you’re Supergirl and do what you say. Easy peasy.

Then, though, three people got out of a car at the end of the bridge—men, two with dark hair and one blond, one taller than the rest, carrying…

Of course. A bomb.

Which meant everyone on the bridge had to be evacuated by hand, flown in their cars to the on the opposite end, past the fallen trees and the pod full of Kryptonite, or else they would get blown up.

“Everybody, off the bridge, now! This way, hurry!”

Supergirl watched, scanning the bridge from above to make certain every civilian was safely on solid ground, as she flew to the other end.

Whoever these demolition dudes were, they knew what they were doing. Or maybe they were just enthusiastic and oversupplied. Either way, every weak point was hit, hanging with heavy clusters of trinitrotoluene like fat grapes on vines, with at least seven different triggers that she could see on first glance.

“Whatever you’re trying to get out of this,” Supergirl said, floating down to the line between lanes with her hands on her hips, “it’s not worth it. You want destruction? I’m going to stop you. You want death? Your casualties have all been evacuated. There are no cars left on this bridge to steal or steal from. If you disengage your charges, we can handle this without anybody getting hurt.”

“Or,” said the blond, “and hear us out, we like blowing stuff up, we already got paid, and we’re gonna do it anyway.”

“I think that’s a pretty good answer, Ted,” said the shorter brunet, thumb hovering over one detonator.

“Me, too, Tim, that’s why I came up with it.”

“You’re both idiots,” said the tallest, clutching a switch to his chest. “She knows your names, and she knows we were hired. _Idiots!”_

“Well, that’s not fair!” Supergirl pouted. “I’m sure they’re doing their best, uh… what’s your name, again?”

“That’s Nathaniel Tryon,” Tim said, “ but we call him Nate.”

“He did demolitions in Afghanistan. Said it was to pay for college.” Ted spoke out of the side of his mouth, from behind a hand: “But I think he just likes blowing stuff up.”

“That is very helpful information, boys. Thanks for playing.” Supergirl reached out and, in one blur of motion, ripped the charges free of the bridge and tossed them up into the air before they could blow. High above, they exploded, an impromptu and ultimately underwhelming fireworks display. “Now, if you’ll just come with me for a moment—”

Frog-marching Tim and Ted into the backseat of their car and breaking the locks was pretty straightforward, but then Nate started running, and he still had his switch, and—

There goes their getaway car.

And the back end of the bridge.

Supergirl took off after him, chasing him to the edge of the bridge. It was a straight shot, but she couldn’t risk using her laser vision to cut him off; a quick x-ray peek told her he had more explosives hidden in his jacket, and blowing the whole bridge would be a problem. He was going to make it to the other side, and he was going to get near the Kryptonite, and—

With one sharp breath, Supergirl froze his feet in place right at the halfway mark. Then, to stop him blowing any other charges, or doing something suicidally stupid, she froze his hands, too, and his jacket full of bombs.

“You know,” she said, grabbing him by the collar, “if you all already got paid, you’re not tripling your paycheck by double crossing them.”

“Says you. My boss doesn’t like loose ends.”

“And you’re telling me that because no criminal likes loose ends, and it’s not helpful information to have.”

“Ding, ding, ding.”

 

☆

 

Lena was restless, to say the least. She couldn’t turn on the TV to check the news, she couldn’t check her phone for D.E.O. alerts—once again, she was rendered useless.

God fucking damnit.

The worst part was, everyone else was useless, too, but they seemed to be having an okay time of it. Maggie seemed to not like Sam, which was fine, because Alex was not particularly subtle about her new friend, and if they were having a fight about having kids, being this involved in a stranger’s was probably a punch in the throat, but she wasn’t being a dick about it. Alex was a perfect hostess in Kara’s absence, and had migrated to the carpet next to Sam’s chair so she could better look at pictures of Ruby, who was an admittedly adorable kid, even while playing the oboe with so much effort she’d gone cross-eyed; likewise, Sam was a perfect guest, chatting animatedly with Alex about anything and everything under the sun, transitioning seamlessly from talk of childcare to motorcycles and more.

Lena chimed in when directly asked to, but otherwise, she was staring out the window, feeling useless, both resentful of and protective over the woman she could no longer fight alongside.

_God fucking damnit!_

“Crap,” Maggie said, bolting up off the couch. “Babe, I gotta go, there’s a bomb threat on the bridge.”

“Holy shit,” Sam muttered, eyes wide.

“You’re on call right now?”

“It’s all hands on deck,” she said smoothly, planting a tight-lipped kiss on the top of Alex’s cheekbone. “Supergirl’s averting a crisis, everyone’s evacuated, but she can’t carry three bombers off a bridge at once.”

Lena let out a little relieved sigh, then straightened herself out, because if she was going to say she wasn’t dating Supergirl, she needed to look a lot less worried about the Woman of Steel’s wellbeing. “Which bridge?”

“Kara should be fine,” Maggie said, looking her briefly in the eyes. “When she gets back, tell her I’m sorry work got in the way of hanging out.”

 _That_ felt pointed. “Will do.”

And then there were three. With Alex’s fiancée heading towards the danger, there was finally an excuse to turn on the news, but Alex couldn’t make herself watch, and instead busied herself with packaging the recycling and the trash to take it outside.

“I can help,” Sam offered, but Alex waved her off.

“You are a guest, which means you don’t even think about helping. Sit back, have another drink. Feel free to change the channel—”

Lena shot Alex a ferocious look.

“—or not. I’ll be back in a sec.”

“We won’t have too much fun without you.”

“I didn’t say _that.”_

And then there were two. Jesus.

Alone together, Sam’s back to the TV and Lena trying desperately not to look too interested, there was really no other way things could’ve gone.

“I’m sorry—” they both began, voices overlapping, and then: “No, you go.”

Eventually, Lena convinced Sam to let her go first. She hadn’t exactly developed a taste for receiving apologies after Alex’s that past weekend, and if she went first, she could probably blarney her way into covering whatever was making Sam feel guilty, curtailing her need to say the s-word. “I shouldn’t have let the conversation stay on work when I put you through the wringer today, and it was so inappropriate for me to be here when Alex asked about Ruby’s father. That’s none of my business, and your personal life isn’t public property. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to, and you were clearly uncomfortable.”

“No, you—that’s not on you. And I’m a big girl, I know how to say ‘no,’ and I’m sure if I had, it would’ve been respected here, of all places.” Sam let out a sigh. “I don’t talk about my past, because I don’t think it matters to who I am now. Ruby and me, we’re golden. Solid as a rock. I can talk about her all day, because I am so, _so_ proud of her, and you’re not in charge of what other people ask me.”

“Okay.”

“Besides, right now, you’re not my boss, right? You’re my friend.”

“I like the sound of that,” Lena said, hugging her knees.

“And I’m sorry,” Sam said, with an air of careful deliberation, “for… I keep bringing up the superhero stuff. And you don’t do that anymore. It’s got to be a weird situation, and I don’t mean to make things weirder, especially when you’ve been so generous and understanding and—and welcoming!”

“It’s fine. It’s—like you said, I don’t have to talk about it if I don’t want to. And at least you asked, because everybody else… I think, honestly, they’re scared if they bring it up, I’ll break.”

“Would you?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s different, when you ask, because you weren’t a part of things. You’re a new element, unrelated, so I can talk about it with you and it’s not like I have to think about what they think of it all, what they thought back then. It’s just… a thing that happened.”

“Do you miss it?” Sam asked, picking at her thumbnail. “Having powers? I read the, uh, the interview with Cat Grant.”

And therein lay the rub.

“Yeah,” Lena said, after much deliberation, “I do. Not just the powers, but… who I was, with them? When I didn’t know where they came from. When they were just part of me, and had nothing to do with anything else. Putting on that mask, it was kind of freeing. I could be judged on my intentions, on my actions, rather than on my reputation or my past. When I helped people, they thanked me. When I wanted to do good, I could. When I spoke, my words mattered.”

“And you think they don’t now?”

“Galaxy Girl, as stupid as the name was, people liked her. People who hadn’t even met her liked her.” Lena shrugged. “Me? Not so much.”

“I mean, these guys like you. Alex and Maggie. _Kara.”_

“What do you mean, _‘Kara’?"_

“I mean, usually it’s the journalist femme fatale serving as the vertex of the love triangle between the superhero and the clumsy goof coworker, but when two of the points are superheroes and only one is a journalist and all three are women…”

“Are you insinuating that I’m in a love triangle with Kara Danvers and Supergirl?”

“I don’t think there’s a butch equivalent of femme fatale, but hey, if it works, it works.”

Lena couldn’t help it. She laughed. There had been a point, last year, when she’d wondered the exact same thing—who would she choose, Kara or the Caped Crusader?—and she’d picked Kara, and then it hadn’t mattered. And Kara had known the whole time, and just let her stew, and—

Okay. Not funny anymore.

Alex closed the door. “What are we laughing about?”

“Tell me I’m not totally on the wrong track, Alex, come on. Your sister, Lena Luthor, Supergirl—it’s Lois Lane, Clark Kent, Superman! The math is a little hinky, considering, but I think it shakes out.”

Alex blinked, looked between the two of them, and let out a cackle. “Oh, my god!”

“Am I wrong?”

“No,” she said, wiping one eye, “you’re so not wrong. Oh, my god, that’s priceless.”

“Clark Kent is Kara’s cousin,” Lena said primly.

_“It runs in the family?”_

 

☆

 

 

Supergirl handed Tryon over to the NCPD, recognizing Maggie’s face behind the wheel of the cop car he was folded into the backseat of. She ducked down and rapped on the window, and Maggie rolled it down, poked her head out.

“Nice night for half a bombing, huh?” she asked dryly.

“Aren’t you off the clock, Detective Sawyer?”

“Duty calls when duty calls.”

Kara frowned and, gaging the distance between them and Tryon, dropped her voice to a whisper. “Is everything okay with you and Alex? Things were sort of weird all night.”

“We’re working on some stuff, and this really isn’t the time, place, or uniform for this discussion.”

Kara stepped back, hands up in playful cooperation, and said, “You have a good night, officer.”

“You, too, Supergirl.”

With that, Maggie drove off, and Kara zoomed towards the pod. She could send a quick text to Alex once she was with the pod, make sure a team came out to pick it up, keep watch until they took it in and fly there to go over its contents once the Kryptonite was safely removed and destroyed.

She landed at the uprooted roots of the tree she’d thrown across it for cover, followed the line of its trunk towards the heap of loose soil…

Found it missing.

No. No, no, no, no.

Kara shot up into the air and scanned the road ahead for any sign of the pod. In the distance, amidst the traffic too tightly packed to intervene in safely, she could just make out a bloated Mercedes Benz with an Edge Global vanity plate.

Peering into the drivers’ seat with her x-ray vision, Kara was shocked. It wasn’t Edge behind the wheel—but of course he wouldn’t get his hands dirty, the bastard.

_EDGE 2 on the plates, driver has plates in their skull._

Dropping back into the thicket, Kara peered around, looking for footprints. Within moments, she found them: stilettos, and judging by the stride, on the long legs of a tall woman.

Yikes.

_Upside, Lillian would never work with Edge. Right?_

 

☆

 

By the time Alex got out to the scene, and they both got back to the D.E.O., Kara was kind of a mess. Pod, lost—worse, taken. She had no real leads as to where the woman working with Tryon and his team had gone, other than out of town, or who she was. It could have been anyone, and now they have Kryptonite.

So, yeah, she’s earned her daily mess quota. She’s earned overtime.

And she felt both better and worse when Lena showed up, pulling her into an immediate hug, because Lena’s concerned, yay!, and also, this might be the first time Lena has instigated a hug in… in a while. Ouch.

“Are you okay?” she murmured, looking Kara in the eyes as if she could catch a glimpse of Kryptonite green. “Is she okay, Alex?”

“She’s fine. No direct exposure, the thief didn’t make any attempts to engage. It’s likely they didn’t even know what was inside the pod.”

“She. And she works for, or with, Edge.” Kara shook her head. “Or maybe she just stole his car to throw us off the scent.”

“Fuck.”

“Plates read EDGE 2. It wasn’t the car he rides around in, but it was definitely company model. And now he has that pod, and whatever else was inside it. Kryptonite, information crystals—”

Kara felt her throat tightening up, her eyes burning, and she covered her face with her hands.

“Oh, sunshine,” Lena murmured, pulling her into Hug Number Two, tucking her chin over the top of Kara’s head. “We’re going to get them back. He can try and pull whatever he wants with me, but he crossed a line when he brought you into it.”

Kara wrapped her arms around Lena’s waist, a greedy, impulsive embrace, hands clenched into fists in the fabric of her dress, anchoring her there. “Please—”

“It’s okay. We’ll fix this.”

Alex put a hand on Kara’s shoulder. “I already called NCPD; we’re setting up a joint surveillance unit. He so much as blows his nose, we’re gonna know about it. And we’re looking for the car, too. We’ve got your back.”

Kara nodded, still clinging tightly with one hand while the other released, clamping down over Alex’s. They stayed like that for a long while, but then Kara inhaled, shaky but much steadier, and released her grip.

“I need to look at what’s in the first pod,” she said, “and I need an analyst tracking betahedron signatures.”

“I’ll put Winn on it,” Alex promised. “Just, uh, what’s a betahedron?”

“It’s like the omegahedron that powered Fort Rozz, but smaller.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

“So, on Krypton we used betahedrons to power probes that scientists would send out into space that contain Kryptonian artifacts, like those crystals embedded with information like our history, religion, scientific advancements, so other worlds could learn our culture. Those two probes were linked, so they must have identical power sources—”

“They’re sigma-linked,” Lena gasped. “We have one, we aren’t just able to track the other—we might be able to call it to us.”

“But until we do, Edge or his goon or whoever this woman is, has an unlimited power supply, _and_ Kryptonite, and no idea that they have it or what it’s capable of.”

“Of course not, it’s Edge. He may be evil, but he’s an idiot on a good day, and ego-blind the rest of the time. For all we know, he’s going to strap some dynamite to the front of the pod to try and crack it like an egg and he’ll blow the whole city sky high.”

“No,” Kara said, “not dynamite. TNT. He works in construction, right? He probably has an unlimited supply, insurance in case some ‘mysteriously goes missing’…”

“You think he hired the bombers?”

“I know he did.”

“So he’s definitely targeting Supergirl now?” Scoffing, Lena crossed her arms. “Can we turn that surveillance detail into protective custody?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Alex said, already dialing.

“And I’ll go start scanning for betahedron signatures, try and figure out how to contract the bond.” Lena gave Kara’s hand a parting squeeze. “We’re gonna get him, okay? Don’t—just don’t put yourself at risk.”

“Isn’t that my line?”

Lena set her jaw, shook her head. “Not today, it isn’t.”

With that, she was gone, and Kara was stuck, waiting, useless in the med bay. Ugh. She could go down to the room with her mother’s hologram, but odds were, Lena would be working in there, which could be tricky—distracting—and the likelihood that being in there would make Kara feel any less claustrophobic and panicked was low, low, low.

Kara laid back under the yellow sun lamps, which weren’t even on, and closed her eyes, just listening.

Floors away, Lena, putting on a radiation suit just in case; control hub, Winn, tracking betahedron signatures; just down the hall, Alex on the phone—

“—know that, Maggie, but it was his company car, I guarantee you’ll find an Edge Global tag on the explosives you confiscated from Tryon, and once he’s in custody, you can make him confess, subpoena the GPS for all the company cars—”

_“Make him confess? We don’t all work at Guantanamo for aliens, Alex.”_

“Look, I know things are rough right now, but this isn’t about either of us. This is about Kara. And I know you’ve had your differences, but—”

_“Fine. I’ll see what I can do. But there’s no way we’re getting a warrant this time of night.”_

“That’s fine. Um. You can have the apartment tonight, if you want. I’ll probably be here, or at Kara’s, until we get this figured out, so…”

_Oof._

Maggie sighed. _“It’s not like that. I’m not… I’m not mad at you.”_

“No, I know. I’m not mad at you either. We jumped into this really fast, and for reasons that don’t really hold water, and if I could take a night off and think, I would, but I have to make sure some asshole developer doesn’t poison my little sister, so if you could just sleep on my very nice bed so I can live vicariously through you, and take some time to think about what you want, I would really appreciate that.”

_“Jeez, Danvers, you sure know how to woo a girl.”_

“Uh-huh. Get some shut-eye, Sawyer. I expect you to stalk him to Republican brunch tomorrow morning at early bird special o’clock.”

Kara wasn’t entirely sure how to handle that. Any of that. When Alex walked back in, though, she took one look at her and said, “You eavesdropped.”

“Not intentionally?”

“Uh-huh. Scoot over.”

Kara scooted, and Alex hopped up next to her, staring up and the darkened sunlamp.

“God, that thing is ugly.”

“It’s not exactly designed for aesthetics.”

“Yeah, well, I think it’s really ugly, and it sucks that whenever someone gets the drop on you, you have to stare up at it to get better. We should make Lena make a flatscreen that emits UV rays, set it up on the ceiling. You can indulge your Judy Garland crush while your miraculous cells refuel.”

“I’m not miraculous. My cells metabolize solar radiation at a different rate. That’s it.”

“Yeah, but you’re there. You’re powerful, and you give a crap, and you help. Like, tonight. You could have—and probably should have, god knows I would have—gone straight for the pod, let the bridge blow, saved your own skin and punched the crap out of Edge’s goon. Instead, you flew every single car off that bridge, one by one.”

“Including the car that then drove off with that pod.”

“Okay. One out of a hundred vehicles was driven by a dick. But that’s ninety nine drivers, plus passengers, who got home safe tonight and are still alive because you metabolize solar radiation at a different rate and want to help. That’s not a miracle, that’s you choosing to fix what you find broken, every single day.”

“May Rao protect us so that we might protect others.”

Alex reached over and grabbed Kara’s hand. “Exactly.”

“I’m sorry, about you and Maggie.”

“I’m not. I mean, I am, and it sucks, but maybe we’ll figure this out, too. Y’know? Maybe in the end we’ll both want the same things, and it’ll be every fairy tale nobody’s supposed to end up getting, but we do.”

“Yeah,” Kara said, squeezing gently, “maybe.”

 

☆

 

Kara, as Kara, went to work the next day, unlike Lena, who stayed at the D.E.O., or Alex, who hadn’t left work the night before. She didn’t report directly to CatCo; instead, she shot James a quick text explaining things semi-comprehensibly and went straight to Edge Global’s National City office.

His assistant wasn’t even in yet. Yikes.

So, with no one to stop her, Kara just waited at his desk until he walked in, talking to the assistant who had arrived fifteen minutes after Kara—something about reservations for breakfast—without looking where he was going.

Double yikes.

“—and I swear to god, if Veronique’s doesn’t have my table, you can go back to waiting tables!”

“Wow,” Kara said, steepling her fingers, _“someone’s_ in a bad mood, considering the heist they pulled off last night.”

“Holy—! What is with you people and coming into my office? First the Luthor, now you—”

“Let’s talk about Ms. Luthor.” Kara rose from behind his desk and planted her hands on her hips, crossing towards him quickly, hackles raised. “Let’s talk about how you’re just trying to cause problems for her, wasting your own time and money to do so. Let’s talk about the fraudulent insurance claim you filed last week when ten thousand dollars’ worth of trinitrotoluene was supposedly stolen from a construction site at the waterfront—and then recovered on the bridge last night by Supergirl and the NCPD, being used by bombers who said, and I quote, that they’d been ‘hired,’ and ‘paid,’ by ‘someone who doesn’t like loose ends.’”

“That’s all hearsay,” Edge blustered, “that could be anyone!”

“Hm. It could. Except, Morgan—may I call you Morgan? I’m gonna call you Morgan—the three men in question were Ted Grand, deceased, Tim Moore, deceased, and Nathaniel Tryon, currently in police custody. All veterans hired through your ‘Employ Our Heroes’ initiative. I don’t think bombing an active commuter bridge is very heroic, do you, Morgan?”

“So? They had means and opportunity to rob me. I took a chance on some bad apples, what can I s—?”

“And, while they distracted law enforcement, a tall woman in stiletto heels with steel plates in her skull drove a getaway car, a black Mercedes Benz, the same make and model as all your company cars—”

“Conjecture!”

“—with a license plate that read EDGE 2. That’s the number, not spelled out.” Kara traced it in the air, then jabbed him in the collarbone with her extended finger. “Lots of people are watching you, Morgan. Lots of people know what you’re up to. Maybe you stole something that can give you a leg up on Supergirl; I doubt it, but maybe you did. Maybe you stop me from publishing this article; I’m sure you could figure out a way to do that by the end of the day, if you put your mind to it. Maybe you outsmart the local cops, the FBI. But you don’t have the brainpower or the manpower to do all of that, no matter who drives your getaway car.

“There is strength in numbers, Edge, and more people want to protect Lena Luthor than want to watch you burn her down. I’d say watch your back, but we have you surrounded; you just don’t have enough eyes to see us all coming.”

Edge looked Kara straight in the eyes and shouted, “Security!”

In stormed two fairly big dudes in fairly nice suits. Kara could’ve thrown them both out the window with one pinkie finger, but in the pursuit of secrecy, she allowed herself to be dragged out like a sack of potatoes who couldn’t hurt a fly.

“Why don’t you go interview Lena about her merger? You’re so upset about a little insurance fraud, how about an illegal monopoly? Or will she no longer be able to pay your per-word once her company finally cracks?”

“The last time you threatened her, didn’t Supergirl put you in time-out on a shipping tanker?” Kara called back, kicking fruitlessly. “What’s it like, being too stupid to stop doing what got her attention in the first place before she puts you away for good?”

 

☆

 

Lena did not handle frustration well.

Correction: she did not handle her plans being foiled when her plans’ only outcome would be helping someone she cared about. The instability of the betahedron after the crash and rough travel meant that summoning it through the quantum bond between the two power sources was just asking for a catastrophic nuclear event to level the California coast, and while they’d tracked it down, it kept moving, the signal scrambled by some outside tech and unsteady just based off the betahedron’s own fragility.

After a day of lead-lined suits that still made her nervous, whether she’d ever admit it or not, and useless tinkering, she would have liked nothing more than to go back to her apartment and sketch some new, better practically-informed neuron prostheses from her bathtub.

Or Kara’s bathtub, because like hell would she leave her without at least one backup in case Edge came a-knocking.

Instead, she left the hologram room and was immediately assaulted by about a million voicemails from Sam, the most recent of which promised, in an eerily calm voice, that everything was fine and there was no need for Lena to come to the office.

Naturally, she went straight to the office, listening to the other voicemails in reverse chronological order on the commute.

Fucking Edge.

By the time she got to L Corp, her enclosed-leaden-space tension had faded and been entirely replaced by the oh-shit-my-business-is-failing-and-it’s-all-my-fault tension, which may have been worse. _Nice to know I have my priorities in order,_ Lena thought as the elevator climbed up to her top floor office. _God, I miss being able to super-speed up the stairs. Or, better yet, just jump onto my balcony. Everybody knows I could do that, so if I could do that…_

But then, she got out of the elevator and walked into her office and saw no disaster, no disarray. Her shared desk was neatly organized, and Ruby was asleep on the couch under Sam’s suit jacket, and Sam hovered over her, hand clasped over her mouth, hunched in on herself.

“Love that couch,” Lena said softly. “So many stress-naps happened on that couch. I found out I had superpowers on that couch.”

Sam let out a breath, relaxing, and then snapped into a sharp posture, hands pressed together in front of her chin. “The update!” As she walked back to the desk to show Lena the finalized paperwork, she explained, “Morgan Edge tried to get the FTC to quash the merger, but I got the complaint dismissed. The merger is… _finally_ done.”

“Congratulations! You saved the deal and a lot of jobs this week. Really good work, Sam.”

And, somehow, the praise made Sam cry. Lena got that—who hasn’t been brought to tears by an ill-timed kind word at least once?—and still felt horrible.

“Sam?”

“I’m sorry. Oh… This is _so_ unprofessional.”

They both sat, and Lena reached across the table. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m just—screwing up. Not with work! With Ruby. All she wanted to do was to practice her song with me, and I kept saying, ‘no, later, later, later,’ and… I mean, look at her. I just feel like the worst mother.”

_Huh._

Sam, wiping under her eyes with the side of her finger, asked, “Why are you smiling?”

“Because I actually had the worst mother, objectively speaking. Twice. So I find your self-appraisal a little funny.”

“I mean, my kid fell asleep on my couch in the office, that’s not great.”

“She fell asleep watching her mom work hard. She may not understand the ins and outs, but she knows it’s important and you’re the only one who can fix it, and she knows, even if you can’t always dedicate your time to her, you’ll at least try and be with her. That is how you raise a girl to be a badass.”

Sam looked up, blinking back another flood. “She already is a badass.”

“Yeah, because she’s loved,” Lena said, “and she knows it.”

With a nod, Sam’s eyes drifted over to Ruby, still curled up on the couch. “Think you can muster up one last burst of super-strength to help me carry her to my car?”

“No, but I can use my good old-fashioned pseudo-human deadlifting muscles to get her into the parking lot.”

“Well, by all means.”

So, with Sam’s help, Lena shifted a sleeping twelve-year-old into the world’s most awkward piggyback ride into the elevator. Sam carried the backpack, Lena carried the kid, and they made it through with no complications.

“This won’t happen again,” Lena promised, watching the floors tick down. “Today was… an unforeseen complication, but once we fix it, it’s fixed for good.”

“Supergirl on the bridge, right? Someone in one of the cars below caught footage of her catching some… some pod, glowing green, dropping it—someone dosed her with Kryptonite?”

“No, it was just a soil sample from her home planet sent out in a probe, completely benign until it got close to her. But someone stole it. Someone who works for Edge.”

“Jesus.”

“So I spent the whole day trying to track the pod without blowing it up and dosing the atmosphere with Kryptonite.”

“And you managed it?”

“Almost. We can trace the signal, but the driver is blocking us about half the time, so we can’t always keep it consistent, especially since the energy is unstable.”

“Well, I can help with the jammer.” Sam tucked her chin. “I mean, I’m not—I don’t have clearance, I’m not an expert or anything, but I’m pretty good with computers.”

“Oh, I know.”

Sam grinned.

“You don’t need to worry about that, though. God knows, I can’t really handle my own workload right now, and I’m not taking care of a kid, too.” Lena sighed. “Ooh, I miss not needing sleep.”

“You didn’t need to sleep when you had..?”

“Well. For a little while. Most of the time, my powers were still partly suppressed, so I still needed some sleep, some food, especially when I used them. But towards the end? Once R—once she unlocked my full potential, I didn’t need anything. I could’ve run on forever if we didn’t have to poison the air to keep her out.”

“The lead dispersal.” Sam looked at her sideways. “And that’s why you were worried about the Kryptonite getting into the air.”

“Yeah. Supergirl is always super, always full strength. If the air turns poison for her, we can’t just turn it off. She’ll die.”

“Wow.” Sam let out a shaky laugh. “Things sure are complicated when you have powers, huh.”

“Yeah. They’re also a lot easier, though, in a lot of ways. Everything is a trade-off; you win some, you lose some.”

Sam nodded, and they watched another four floors fly by before she spoke again. “How did you know you had powers? How did you figure it out?”

“Things started slowly. My hearing got better, to the point I had a constant headache. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t function. Then I got stronger. I talked to Kara, who got me in touch with Supergirl, who took me to, uh, her government buddies to get me tested. We found out how strong I was, what I was capable of.”

“And then, what, you got roped into vigilantism?”

“No. I was wired and bored and lonely and I just… accidentally stopped a bullet in a park. Copper-nickel alloy, so no lead. I had no idea what my weaknesses were for a while, so I was just running around, swinging swords and being an idiot.”

“So you developed powers, tested them, chose to be a hero.”

“I—I wouldn’t really put it like that—”

“No, no, it’s just… I don’t know, who doesn’t want to be a superhero when they’re a kid? When you’re scared and vulnerable, being powerful and fearless sounds like the best thing in the world. You just never really hear how it happens, and then you grow up, and you start worrying, y’know, do they get to choose? What if you have super strength and you just want to be, I don’t know, a dog walker? Or an engineer? Or the guy who makes cotton candy at street fairs?”

“Then you work really hard not to break the things you touch, and you become what you want to be.” Lena shrugged, adjusting her elbows on Ruby’s knees. “I felt I owed a debt. I felt guilty because of my brother, and I wanted to make things right, and that’s why I did it. And then once I started, I kept going because for once, I wasn’t being punished for trying. If I had been raised by good, normal people who didn’t expect excellence and breed psychopaths like pedigree puppies, maybe I would have gotten a history degree and discovered I had powers when I accidentally ripped a rejected thesis in half. Or I would’ve become a sommelier and accidentally broken an entire winery’s inventory. Or I never would have known, and I would’ve done anything I set my mind to, and I would be completely normal and well-adjusted.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, “maybe.”

Finally, they hit the ground floor. Sam leaned on the opened elevator doors, just in case, and Lena hustled out to the parking lot, walking on her toes so the click of her shoes wouldn’t wake Ruby.

“Don’t worry about that,” Sam assured her, “she sleeps like a freaking rock. Especially when she’s nervous.”

“Is she worried about the talent show?”

“I hope not.” Sam unlocked the car, held the back door open, too, so Lena could gently lower Ruby into the backseat. “To be honest, she’s, uh, she’s nervous about me.”

“You’ve been pulling easily twice your weight, Sam. I promise, today was a fluke. You’re not alone in this.”

Sam smiled at Lena over her shoulder, leaning back to buckle Ruby in. “Neither are you, y’know.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“I’ve never really had friends before. Or a job that demands so much of me—which is not a bad thing, and I’m not complaining. She just… we’ve only had each other, for a really long time, and neither of us know how to deal with spending so much time apart.”

“You’ll figure it out. You’re a good mom.”

“Definitely not the worst, at least.”

“We’ll work on it. Before my next quarterly assassination attempt, I’m gonna hear you say you’re a good mom.”

“Please don’t get assassinated in front of my kid.”

“I said _attempt._ It never sticks.”

“I’m gonna need that in writing.”

“I’ll put it on your post-attempt survival bonus.”

 

☆

 

Come morning, things aren’t so terrible.

Apparently, somehow, Lena and Kara both slept through the alerts for the pod recovery: it was found, containing five crystals and only trace amounts of kryptonite, in the middle of the woods in Washington.

“Is it possible that the trace was enough to weaken Kara like that?” Lena hissed into her phone, eyes on her office door, watching for Sam’s return. “Kara?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said, at the same time as Kara said, “Maybe.”

Not particularly promising, but still, there was hope, officially documented hope, and if Lena held a secret pessimistic fear in the pit of her stomach that the getaway driver had made off with an actual lump of radioactive rock, well, that was nobody’s business but hers and the analysts’.

Better yet, with the merger finally pushed through, things at L Corp had lightened up, and with the pod recovered, the D.E.O. didn’t need her on-site, so Lena could actually pull her weight at L Corp, leaving Sam leeway to sneak off to have lunch with her kid.

There was also the promise of a lemon curd sfogliatelle from the Italian bakery near Ruby’s school, and Lena had fallen out of the habit of saying no to free pastry.

“Look,” Alex said, “we’ve got scanners for any radioactive spikes, NCPD is questioning Tryon as we speak, and Kara has her crystals back.”

“Obelisks,” Kara corrected, but Lena could hear her smiling. “I—it feels like I have a piece of Krypton back. Like there’s something to tie me back to my home. The history isn’t just in my head, now; it’s here, for anyone to read.”

“For people with security clearance to read. God knows, we don’t need some weirdo bioengineer trying to recreate Medusa. No offense.”

Simultaneously, Lena and Kara said, “None taken.”

“Listen, I’ve got to go, we’re copying the _obelisks_ into the D.E.O. archives and I’m the only one on site who reads even a little of what they say.”

“I’m submitting my Edge piece today! I have to be here.”

“And I promised Sam, so she could go spend time with Ruby.”

“No excuses! We are all responsible adults doing our jobs! I just need to brush up on my Old High Kryptonian.”

“And your modern Kryptonese.”

“Kara, not all of us have super space brains, leave me alone.”

“Okay, enough,” Lena said, grinning in spite of herself. “Let’s all go _be_ responsible adults and _do_ our jobs. See you both tonight at Ruby’s show?”

“Of course.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

The grin deepened. “Listen, I’ve got another call coming through. Fingers crossed there are no crises.”

“Bye! _Rrip khap zhao!”_

“What did she say?”

“How did you grow up with her and not learn to speak the language, Alex?” Lena asked, cheeks blazing. “Figure it out yourself!”

With that, she hung up, and switched to the other call.

“Hello, Ms. Luthor? This is Betty, Mr. Edge’s assistant. May I transfer you to him?”

Lena suppressed a snort. “Yes, of course, Betty.”

There was a click, and then Edge’s voice rattled through the line. “Hey, Luthor, wanna give your reporter side piece the story of the year?”

“Are you confessing to your crimes?”

“No, I’m not!”

“So you admit that there were crimes?”

“I survived!”

Lena didn’t bother hiding her scoff this time. “Survived what, the hangover of the year?”

“An attempt on my life. How ‘bout this? Assign your PR gal pal fifteen hundred words on how the terrorist trust fund baby hacked into my car and tried to drive me off the edge of this city!”

“Wait, wait, you’re accusing me of trying to kill you? That’s rich.” But still, what he said lingered. “Which car was this?”

“You know damn well which car it was, you hacked into it! Probably got in when your little buddy broke into my office the other morning.”

“Indulge me, Morgan. Tell me what I did. And stop trying to come up with clever euphemisms for whatever relationship you think I have with whoever you’re talking about; all I hear is foghorn, foghorn, bigot, foghorn, foghorn, when will he stop talking.”

“I left Veronique’s to go to work. I was using my backup car because I was having my baby Benz detailed.”

“Backup car as in…?”

“As in EDGE 2, the one _your_ employee grilled me about yesterday!”

“The one that was stolen.”

“Yes!”

“The one you reported stolen.”

“Yes!”

“And when it just suddenly reappeared in your garage, you didn’t question it? At all?”

“Your employee shows up in my office and threatens me, tells me to watch my back, on _your behalf!_ Next day, suddenly, my car drives off a cliff? You’re trying to tell me _that’s a coincidence?"_

“I’m trying to tell you I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t send anyone to your office, and I certainly didn’t send you sailing into the sea. I don’t put out hits on people, no matter how much I despise them.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I do. Maybe you should tell darling Danvers to watch _her_ back!”

“Don’t you threaten her, Edge,” Lena spat. “Come after me with everything you’ve got. I’m like a cockroach. But you even think about targeting her, and you will regret it until the end of your days.”

“You sound just like your brother. Is that why you used his logo?”

“Used his logo? On _what?”_

“Someone watched my car explode! I didn’t see their face, they were too far off, but they were wearing a Luthor Corp windbreaker!”

“My company is named L Corp, Edge, and has been for almost two years. Do you really think I’m keeping memorabilia from when my genocidal lunatic of a brother was in charge?”

“I think your genocidal lunatic of a brother is still your brother. Isn’t that how siblings work? ‘the only one allowed to attack my little sister is me?’”

“So you admit you tried to attack me.”

“I said he thinks I did. He may be the smartest man in the world, but he’s still behind bars. His information is bound to be a little off.”

_Phone calls, now this. What else is he up to? What else is he capable of from behind bars?_

“Edge, if you think my brother tried to kill you, why don’t you tell the police?”

“They were there! They took me into ‘protective custody,’ and don’t tell me that wasn’t your idea, too!”

“Wait. You’ve been having this conversation from a police station?”

“Yes, where else would I have it?”

“Edge, why don’t you work on helping them find out who _actually_ tried to blow you up? I have more valuable ways to use my time than entertaining your persecution complex.”

With that, Lena hung up, and hid her shaking hands under the desk.

_What the fuck?_

 

☆

 

Kara was beginning to think she needed Lena to say ‘no crises’ every day from now on, because surprisingly, there were no crises. Not a one. She and Alex even made it to L Corp in time to pick Lena up—or, rather, get picked up by her and her driver, who never stopped talking about his husband, which was very sweet even if it made Alex and her precarious engagement a little nauseous—and avoid any traffic.

They even had seats saved! Which, to be fair, was probably more Sam’s doing than Lena’s, but still.

“You guys came!” Sam whispered, beaming.

“Yeah, well, we said we would,” Lena said, shepherding everyone into their seats.

“Sorry Maggie couldn’t make it,” Alex whispered back. “She’s currently supervising Edge while he’s in captivity.”

“Oh, goodie.”

Somehow, Lena ended up sandwiched between Alex and Sam, with Kara sitting on the aisle, which at least gave her plenty of space to stretch her legs—poor Sam, squished up in the middle of the row, somehow managed to look delighted to be there, despite the cramped quarters.

“And now, please welcome Ruby Arias!”

Out she came, the pianist gently warming up as she walked on stage, and Sam got her phone out, eyes already shiny. Alex reached around Lena to give Sam’s shoulder a squeeze, and Lena patted her knee, glancing over at Kara with a soft smile on her face.

Ruby began to sing, and at first, Kara just watched, focusing as much of her attention as she could on Ruby. Vaguely, out of the corners of her eye, she saw Sam pass her phone to Lena so she could wipe her face with a miraculously produced tissue, saw Alex leaning to peek at Sam, not at Ruby on the stage, saw Lena stretch her arms to the perfect height to get the kids in the row in front of them out of frame while keeping Ruby perfectly centered.

Yeah. Today was a good day.

And then Alex started watching properly, eyes fixed on the stage.

And then her eyes welled up.

She made it to the end of the song before bolting, which was impressive, and as Kara zipped off after her, she caught Sam and Lena both rising in their seats as if to give chase, too.

Thankfully, though, they didn’t follow them outside. It was just the two of them, underneath generic party store crepe paper pumpkins, Alex in tears and not explaining.

“Alex? What’s wrong?”

Alex turned, rubbing her thumbs through tear tracks on her knuckles, face suspiciously dry. “Maggie doesn’t want to have kids.”

“I thought that was something you guys decided together. Is that why the…?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is. I agreed, because it’s what she wanted, and I wanted to have what I’m supposed to have. You know? You turn thirty, you better be married, and the fact that I only realized who I want to marry last year doesn’t really factor into the equation.”

“Shouldn’t it?”

Alex gave a wet laugh. “Probably, yeah.”

“Oh, Alex…”

“The thing is, the only way we’re gonna move past it is if _I_ let it go. And I’ve tried, Kara, I—I convinced myself that living a life with her was enough. But it’s not. I don’t want to marry the first woman I fall in love with and resent her for the rest of our lives because I never got to really go after what I want, never got the chance or the choice to—to be my own person, to build my own family. Like Sam and Ruby, like Mom and you and me. Watching them tonight… I want that. I want all the experiences Mom had with us. I want to take her camping and show her the constellations. I want to teach her how to read, and how to throw a punch, and how to make cheesy valentines. I want to hold her when she has a bad dream, and tell her that the world is a better place because she’s in it.

“I want to be a mom,” she said, voice breaking, “oh, god, Kara, what am I going to do?”

“You,” said Kara, pulling her into a hug, “are going to be an _amazing_ mom. That’s what you’re going to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> credit where it's due: the girls night scene where they all talk about sexist shit they've dealt with in the workplace or in an academic setting came from [this post](http://lena-in-a-red-dress.tumblr.com/post/166990151462/you-know-what-would-have-been-a-more-relatable), and the Kryptonese, as always, comes from kryptonian.info, who the show actually ripped off this season by using his work without credit! :/ sad  
> anyways, translations: on the phone with kara while in the desert, lena says _"Iadh vot byth fardhogho"_ which is a horribly structured sentence which translates to "history in ten books" because sometimes your brain will not tell you which is the particle and which is the subject and which is the object; later, while on the phone with both lena and alex, kara tells lena _"rrip khap shao!"_ , which is a properly formatted sentence which means "I love you." 
> 
> this rewrite departs a lot more from canon, in part because i planned it out before s3 aired and in part because the new continuity is annoying and the cw refuses to stick to an existing cast of villains because cbs has cooties or whatever. yes, i was writing Lex Luthor into this sprawling nightmare before they even cast Cryer. no, I will not explain my reasonings beyond the drama being fun and also The Image. yes, there is in fact a person in a Luthor Corp windbreaker at one of the many assassination attempts lena survives, and I took a screenshot and then my laptop exploded so I have no idea where it is. (note: [I just fucking found it yeehaw](http://raspberry-nougat.tumblr.com/post/184340246960/vindication-this-inspired-a-whole-fuckin-thing))  
> yes this chapter is just about everyone being an emotionally needy wreck and making friends and talking about their feelings. yes it is over 15k words long. you chose to read it idk what to tell you!!!!   
> oh! sorry this was late, I binged GLOW and then I started reading a Debbie/Ruth fic and now my brain is being eaten alive


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